Who ate all the flour?

On Thursday our tutors took us to dinner. A dinner in which they cooked for us, on the 55th floor of a 55 story building.  You can see Mainland China from the windows.  I feel a little like Sarah Palin, but seriously, you can actually see Mainland China from the 55th floor of this building.  I rode in an elevator and only had one minor shame spiral in which I had to heave myself out of the elevator taking us down because I had the sudden realization that I was in a cramped death trap that was most likely going  to malfunction or get stuck on the 47th floor.  Since this is NOT the 187th installment of Final Destination, that never happened, nonetheless, I still acted like a big old baby because claustrophobia is real thing and I have it.  It is almost as embarrassing as my arachnophobia.

I hate spiders more than I hate anything in this world.  Spiders ruin everything that is wonderful about life, they are as bad as adding coffee to chocolate.  WORST. THING. EVER.

We went on a little adventure to the supermarket to learn about foods in Chinese.. on the way out of the supermarket and to a little Chinese market and I bought school supplies.  Mostly everything in the store was $10MOP, which is roughly $1.20USD.  I bought a Chinese brand that is similar to Hello Kitty in that it is ADORABLE.  Pencil cases are super popular here and I bought one for myself.  Everything is either super girly and adorable or super feminine and cute and I can't decide what to get and it makes my brain go "WHY JANESSA, DO YOU LIKE THESE THINGS THAT YOUR THREE YEAR OLD NIECE WOULD LIKE??" So I say to my brain, "SHUT UP BRAIN, I'M AN ADULT AND I DO WHAT I WANT."  But seriously, I might get the same pencil case for my three year old niece because it IS adorable. I got the three items below, some cutesy pencils, cause hey! why not, a set of three journals and a set of two notebooks.  It cost me $60MOP which cost me $7.60USD.

Yes, I am an adult who uses these things...

Prior to engaging in adorable retail therapy, we walked through a park.  It was a nice little haven from the busy midtown area we were roaming around in.  Macau is hands down, one of the CLEANEST cities I have ever been too.  I was a little worried about the air pollution when we first arrived and because our dorm had sat stagnant for weeks before we arrived.  I was having a little difficulty breathing, but nothing too terrible that would require my inhaler.  Air pollution is a major issue in Macau..it is crazy industrialized here, the water is about the same color as the Red River, but its all pollution.  Despite the downfalls of air pollution, Macau seems to be a city that really cares about itself and it's looks.  I haven't seen any graffiti or trash.  I saw ONE plastic water bottle on a trail on the mountain at the A-Ma temple.  Anyway, this is the little park.

This is a stone path, and it is meant to gauge how healthy you are.  You walk barefoot on the path, which has smooth oval shaped rocks that are pointed upwards.  If it doesn't hurt or you feel little pain it means you are very healthy.  Apparently my feet like this.

Koi fish pond.  You can't really tell how big some of these dudes are, but I am pretty sure at least one of them weight 100lbs.  It was massive.  It has probably turned carnivorous and is consuming all the small, weak koi.

Cassie Fan, one of the tutors.

Alexa...she looks adorable every day and it makes me feel like a bum for being too lazy to make myself look presentable in public.

The food that the tutors made looked delicious but I didn't eat any of it because I couldn't..even handling the flour while making the dumplings gave me a headache and made me feel sick..who knew that would actually happen when you have Celiac's...strange.  The night ended with Goro doing a dance to Single Ladies, which is somewhere on video and I must get my hand's on it.  Prefect in the off chance that I would need to exploit him for some reason. I think most of the guys ended up dancing to the song and it was actually fairly impressive.  I'm impressed with their dancing ability, but dancing seems to be a thing on Guam.

Overcoming my fear, with a slightly smaller group, while heading down from the 55th floor.  Success.

A very late China update.

I have arrived safely in Macau.  After landing in Hong Kong and having the internet lie to us, we attempted to get a bus to take us to the ferry so we could leave Hong Kong and get to Macau.  Since we are clearly all tourists, no bus would let us on.  Eventually someone relented and we made it onto the correct bus and had to purchase our ferry tickets.
An hour later, Macau.
Several hours later, dorm room.
A really gross, smelly, room. That has cockroaches.  We also only have one working ethernet port so only one person can be on the internet at a time.  I don't know if they do this because, well, I have no idea...but the internet gets shut down from midnight to 5:00 am...so thats awesome I guess.

Right after saying goodbye to friends and family, waiting to leave for Hong Kong.

Our safe arrival in Hong Kong.

Macau University of Science and Technology is otherwise ridiculously awesome.  The campus is gorgeous and there is a skyline that is lit up all night long.  It is crazy gorgeous.

There is a small city of hotels and casinos that are basically across the street from MUST.  The City of Dreams houses the casino, numerous high end retail stores, Chopard, Gucci, Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs, Burberry...you name it and it is in the City of Dreams (I bought my very first Marc Jacobs there) The House of Rock hotel and casino, restaurants, clubs and a theater for a show called House of Dancing Water and a strip tease show called Taboo...I can't afford either one of the shows, they are close to 100USD sadly.  Taboo looks amazing though.

The opulence of these hotel and casinos are insane.  The Venetian is across the street from City of Dreams and it has own Venice like streets complete with gondolas that you can go for boat rides in.

So, our dorm room has been cleaned and I have been doing stuff, like riding buses and homework and learning Chinese... It turns out I am not very good at Chinese.. This is what I know so far:

Ni hao wo de ming zi shi Ma Zhen (My Chinese name is Ma Zhen, more on that later) Wo shi mo xi ge ren
Hello, my name is Ma Zhen, I am Mexican.  The ladies at the counter in the student restaurant asked me if I was Indonesian and in my broken Chinese I told them I was Mexican, so now they call me mi xi ge (Mexico) when I walk up to the counter.  I ordered my food by saying one word and hoping I get something that I will like to eat.  Like for example, if I want beef I usually ask for it and end up with pork anyway.  Meat is rou, and beef is niu rou, but I usually have to eat zhu rou which is pork. I can't add the tones because I don't know how to and I don't think my English speaking laptop has the ability to do it.

Today in class we did a presentation about animals... I was a xiong mao (panda), hou zi (monkey), and an tuo niao (ostrich)...It was ridiculous.


Today I learned how to say various fruits.  I will probably not ever use any of the fruits but at least I can make an attempt to memorize them!

Our xiao lao shi (small teachers, tutors) are incredibly nice. My xiao lao shi, Candy, has given me lots of small gifts.  Today she gave me a red rose ring for good luck on my exam.  I needed it.  I am not very good at recognizing characters and I need to work on memorizing radicals, but that takes time and memory..my brain seems to not do well with either.

Macau is busy..constantly, constantly busy.  I am fearful every time I attempt to cross the street or ride in a bus.  I am fairly confident that I will witness a pedestrian get hit by a bus and I will be on that bus when it happens.  When you are needing to exit from somewhere, say the elevator, the bus, maybe just a door..wherever.. people do not wait.  I spend a lot of time apologizing and saying excuse me.  Also old people really seem to like to shove me out of their way.  I am not sure how I feel about this.  Women dress conservatively, but are very stylish.  My chest piece is very unique and I see lots of people staring at it. Like the old gentleman who followed me around the dollar store. Or the lady who peered over the edge of the escalator to get a better look at it.
I will get hit by a car if I fail to remember that I have to look RIGHT first and not LEFT.

Being Tourists.

The day before I left to Macau, an impromptu day of tourism was had.  Darryl, Ralph, and I headed south for Inarajan.  We laughed, we argued, and made fun of locals.  Mainly we just had fun and looked like complete fools running around Inarajan taking photos in front of everything.

Checking out the view.

The very old steps carved out of rock.  Slippers were not a good choice.

Darryl making the leap from the tower.  He knows how to fly.

Paw prints.

An old bridge.. don't know how old.

We watched some local girls showing around some not local guys and we made commentary.  The girls acted completely helpless despite clearly knowing their way around Inarajan pools and at one point were rendered completely useless while walking over this bridge.  It's like two feet high and you would have to go out of your way to hurt yourself or not be able to walk over it.  This was our reenactment.

This is the statue of Chief Gadao.  He is a legend on Guam.  Notice his half canoe. It was broken in half while as him and another chief from Tumon attempted to paddle in opposite directions.  He then rowed back to Inarajan and his people. That is the legend.

Posing.

This the last remaining piece of the Baptist church that was built in Inarajan in the early 1900s.

This is an idol or a saint or something. I defiled it. Being totally chaud right now. Is that how its spelled?

It was a wonderful day... we ended it by eating delicious food at Jeff's Pirate Cove and watching the sunset.  A perfect last day before going on my trip to China, which I totally deserve. Bitch.