Macau. Taipa. Coloane. The peninsula. Hong Kong. MFM. Taipa grande. Taipa pequena. Fernando's. OTT. San Mui. Maxims. The fruit place. The place we get breakfast. The place that sells dumplings. Downstairs. Patacs. The place that sells that one thing that looks like...and is by that one garden with the wall.
Sound familiar? Probably not. They didn't sound familiar to us 2 months ago either. But now, we have become acquainted, even friends. They are valuable to us and they mean something.
It's incredible how fast the unfamiliar becomes familiar. Just 2 months ago, we were spending hours a day, relishing what was familiar in our lives, knowing we would miss it, and trying to predict what the unfamiliar was going to be like.
Although our lives are completely different than they were just a few short months ago, they have become normal. It's a new normal, of course, but still more normal than not.
A few days after arriving in Macau we sent an email to some friends who lived in China for two years, asking them if they ever got used to playing charades with people and feeling quite uncomfortable about it all. Thankfully they said yes, and we tried to believe we would too. Surprisingly enough, for the most part, we have. There are moments where we still take a deep breath and hope that whatever we are about to embark on works out regardless of the language barrier. It might be walking into a new restaurant and hoping they have an English menu. Or it might be getting into a taxi and hoping they will speak just enough English to get us where we need to go, because many times they won't. (Which is why we have our Chinese speaking colleagues write us notes in Chinese these days.)
We are now pleasantly surprised when we can understand what is going on around us, or when someone we assume only speaks Chinese actually speaks English too. We walk around choosing dinner that hangs in shop front windows, washing our daily produce in vinegar after we've picked it out from the guy around the corner who likes to give us free green onion stalks. We go to work, we come home. We dream about teaching and get kindergarten songs stuck in our head (thanks to Heather singing them all day long). We work a lot, but love it a lot. We walk around the Macau peninsula for hours on end on Saturdays, sometimes by ourselves but usually with the same friends we have dinner with a couple times a week too. We've found our favorite restaurants and food stands and have to remember there are places we haven't tried yet.
Last week we got caught up in the festivities surrounding mid autumn moon festival, the second largest celebration after Chinese New Years here. The city is decorated with hanging lanterns and lights. The grocery stores, pastry shops, and hotels are buzzing with the moon cake selling frenzy that takes place with this festival too. These hearty fruitcake like pastries are most frequently stuffed with sweet pastes and duck egg yolks and are the traditional gift to give to friends, family, and teachers too!
We know someone, who lived abroad and wrote a blog. Heather always bugged her while she was away to write more! She used to tell us that she didn't write more often because she was just living what turned out to be her new normal and it seemed strange just to write about your everyday life. Heather didn't believe it because everyday there was much different than everyday here. There must be something to write about! Until we moved from here to there, we were unaware of how quickly the mind and body adjust to a whole new way of living. It's quite amazing really. But all at the same time we are still quite aware that we are living a whole new adventure. After all, we've only actually cooked dinner in our house less than A handful of times in the last 2 months.
