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.
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