Minnie! She has sprouted...something! As of today it's at least three times as tall as the sprout in this picture and she seems to be keeping on growing.
I have been trying my best all year to capture the unique style of Chinese women's clothing. They like their clothes to be as gaudy as possible usually and often include sequence, bows, animals, etc. This purse was just too great to pass up the photo op. The picture is of stones that have painted cats on them. And the cats for the most part are creepy as can be. Who would ever think that would actually sell??
Cliff and I spent the day wandering around Nanshan. We went to book city and then I really wanted stick food. So we decided to hit up Leah's neighborhood since that was the closest we could think of. This guy came begging for money and was willing to pose for a picture since Cliff gave him a kuai.
We left Zhuhai and headed back to Macau to get breakfast. Macau is really known for their egg tarts. We met up with Andrew, Stella and Roz at St. John's Cathedral facade and then went up on the fort. We ate lunch at this nice Portuguese place where Jess and I split two dishes, one of them was Pineapple Rice that actually came in a pineapple! Then we went to the A-Ma temple and the Maritime Museum both of which were interesting. At the A-Ma temple they had all sorts of incense up to celebrate Tomb Sweeping Day, where Chinese honor their ancestors. These cone shaped things are huge incense that can burn for up to a month. After that Jess, Marie, Cliff and I started heading for home. Jess and I had tickets for the 6:00 ferry and the other two were hoping to get tickets as well. We boarded a bus and ended up missing our stop/it might not have existed. Before we knew it (and after we had started to get worried) we wound up back at the Zhuhai boarder crossing! The four of us bolted for a taxi and found one with a guy who didn't even speak Mandarin. We finally got him to understand where we wanted to go and were trying our best to get him to hurry. Jess and I barreled out of the taxi (unfortunately falling over poor Marie) and ran for the gate. We checked our tickets with 6 minutes to spare and got into a customs line about 20 people long. As the Chinese do, people kept trying to cut us so we did our best to stand our ground. When we got through customs we ran for our gate and luckily were actually a few minutes early. We made it back to China with time to spare for dinner and for Jess to catch her bus. Sadly Marie and Cliff didn't get tickets and ended up having to buy super-class tickets for the 8:40 ferry.
All of us had two days off for a Chinese holiday - Tomb Sweeping Day. So a bunch of us went to Macau for a day and a half. Jess and I went together and spent Sunday afternoon strolling around the city and getting to know different places. Macau was a Portuguese colony until not so long ago so a lot of the buildings were very European and it was an extremely clean city. Then we met up with Marie, Gen, Jen, and Cliff for dinner at this really good Portuguese place. They even gave us complimentary bread and butter!! The food was amazing and we were really lucky to get a table because there were more reservations than the place seemed to be able to handle. But the owner was nice and gave us a late reservation. Jose, a friend of Jess's that just moved to Shenzhen, also joined us. Then we went to take advantage of the other thing Macau is known for, casinos. The casinos there were a lot different than American ones I thought though. Everyone was very intense and it was all about winning money not about having fun at all. So we ended up not staying long, but I did win 80 HKD before we left on a game similar to craps. Then we headed for our hotel in Zhuhai - a neighboring Chinese city.
Before going to dinner Andrew and I went exploring in Xili for a bit. I had always seen a rollerskating rink while I was on the bus so I wanted to find it! We wandered around for awhile but were finally successful. And we're pretty sure it's only 10 kuai to go - so rollerskating here we come!
Good morning China! So jet lag hit me a lot worse this time around. It took me over a week to get on the right schedule again. My problem was I was waking up at 4 or 5 every morning and not being able to fall back asleep. So Thursday I decided it was a good idea to take a nap at 430pm...ended up sleeping until 930. So then went to bed at 1am and woke up at 4am not able to sleep anymore. That did not help. But finally I forced myself to stay awake for a full day and get some rest. The upside of it all was 1) I got a lot of work done between 4-6am and 2) I got to see the sun rise on a couple mornings.
Gross! All through my flights back home to China I knew my heel had been bothering me but I didn't realize it was that bad. I think it was too much walking around in heels while I was home. Still....very gross. I haven't beaten up my foot that badly since Beijing.
The new semester of Chinese class is in full swing! Since a lot of people dropped out all the level one classes got combined into one so now I get the beautiful Jessica as my talking partner which I was excited about (not because I didn't love my previous one Cliff! Just because I don't get to see Jess very often). But she's a much better student than I am - she pays attention very diligently while I'd rather be passing notes (though I restrain myself for her sake).
If you look back at October 20th you will see my picture of the day is the lovely trash can pushed to the side of the road that served as my bus stop for who knows how long. Well the day finally came! My bus stop has been put back together again just like brand new. We still don't have a sign but hey...who can be picky?
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