Studying Chinese from the States

Now that I’m back in the USA I’m actually finding it really easy to keep my Chinese studies up. It hasn’t been reading boring textbooks, or monotonous vocabulary memorization either. Instead, I’ve been using the vast network of people on the web also trying to learn Chinese.

When I first got back I did continue using 大山 Dashan’s “Travel In Chinese” books/ videos, looking at an old text book I never used because I studied abroad instead and skipped that class, watching “Fated to Love You,” which is not as interesting as “Hi, My Sweetheart,” to me, but these means of learning Chinese got boring and repetitive.

Instead I finally joined twitter and found a bunch of really interesting people to follow who post interesting articles about their learning Chinese experiences, useful characters/ or phrases, and anything else useful for learning Chinese. Most of these people tweet about their websites and other people’s sites.

I’ve perused a lot of Confused Laowai’s blog and his website social mandarin. He seems to be a more advanced learner and has really relevant posts that I can relate to.
http://socialmandarin.com
http://confusedlaowai.com

I recently found http://studymorechinese.com/which is another useful website that helps connect people who are trying to learn Chinese.

I also like http://jennyzhu.com/  who happens to host many of Chinesepod.com ‘s podcasts which I absolutely love!

http://chinesehacks.com has interesting posts.

http://www.mandmx.com is a couple and posts cartoons and other interesting posts.

I’m also following Imogen Heap (musician) who’s currently living in Hangzhou traveling to Bhutan, and working on her album.

Now, I moved down to Lynbrook to be closer to NYC and make it easy to interview for jobs and apply to grad schools. You’d think I’d be able to talk with my grandmother 外婆, but unfortunately, she doesn’t speak Mandarin. She mainly speaks the dialect from her small county. She’s from Qingtian county and speaks that dialect. (I call her waboo, instead of waipo) She tells me it’s a dying dialect and that nobody but her sister and brother understands her… However, because my great-(step)-grandmother  speaks Cantonese they have kind of created their own pidgin (not quite though as it is still all Chinese and therefore prolly not so simple). She also speaks a little Shanghainese and Cantonese with her friends.

Now, if I was more fluent in Chinese I’d be able to communicate with her. However, since most of the time when I’m speaking Chinese I kinda of make it up or speak Chin-glish I plan on the speaker to understand what I’m saying because they are a native mandarin speaker. I can’t do this with waboo as the pronunciations are too different and she is hard of hearing now. I don’t know if she can’t hear me or just doesn’t understand.

My point is that I’ve found some great ways to practice my reading comprehension and my listening skills. I still need to find a way to practice my speaking though.

Thank you to all those struggling to learning Chinese and sharing their experiences and knowledge. I wanted to acknowledge them and give them some more notice.

For me, and most likely others, once I started learning it, in has engrossed me now I’m kind of addicted to mastering it.

Family Trip Photos from fb

It has been quite a while since our trip in June. Seems hard to believe already 4 months ago we were in China.

Well finally I uploaded my photos to facebook a couple of weeks ago. However, it occurred to me that not all the people who would probably want to see these photos are my friends or are on fb. Here’s the link to the photos. Enjoy

Too Many “Days” in China

Too Many Days In China

Two weeks traveling with the family sure did go fast!
We’ve been back for about two weeks now and finally over the Jet lag.

For me, it was hectic and crazy guiding everyone all over China. Every day we were exhausted from walking everywhere. I’m glad we only had one hitch in our plans… It was an expensive exhausting mistake that forced us to skip Xi’an.

Lisa and I were really disappointed that we had to skip Xi’an, but after missing the train to Xi’an and the only other option would have been to stand on the train for 13 hours overnight. We decided against that and bought a flight directly to Guilin instead.

 

The cities we did visit were Beijing, Guilin, Yangshuo, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong.

Beijing
Jingshan Park
Forbidden City
Tienanmen Square
Great Wall of China – Jinshanling
Yonghe (Lama) Temple
Confucius Temple & Academy
Bell & Drum Towers
Gongfu show
Summer Palace

Guilin
Reed Flute Cave
Solitary Mountain & Jingjiang Prince City
Jinkeng Rice Terraces – Dazai Village
“Bamboo” Raft River Cruise to Yangshuo

Yangshuo
Impressions Light Show
Bicycle Ride to Moon Hill

Guilin
Seven Stars Park

Shenzhen
Dafen Oil Painting Village
Shanghai Soup Buns
Pirates of the Caribbean at KK Mall
Dim Sum!
Luohu Commercial City
Dongmen

Hong Kong
Mid-Levels
Egg Tarts
City Skyline

Almost there…

I’m almost done with my year abroad and I can’t wait to come home to the States!

Let me mention quickly that I can’t wait for my parents, sister, and cousin, Bryan, to come visit China! While it will be a task to guide them around China, I look forward to the challenge and opportunity to revisit some familiar places. We plan to visit Beijing and typical tourist places, Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors, Guilin/Yangshuo and the rice terraces, and finally end in Shenzhen where I can show them my home turf. Also, Jessica, I hope your summer in China on your program is awesome! 中国欢迎你们！China welcomes you!

This past week we had off for May 1st, which is some holiday here that I’m not particularly sure about. It was a city wide holiday and everyone in China decided to come to the beach! It was nearly impossibly to catch a bus out of Yantian for two days.

Let’s see, we also celebrated makeshift Passover. The emphasis of this gathering was less about the religious normaties but instead about spending time with friends and sharing food and laughter. On our Passover Seder plate we substituted Chinese Wasabi (really really concentrated and quite terrible) for the bitter horseradish. Elie’s charoset was rather tasty. We ate ants on a log, devil eggs, bruschetta, cheeses. breads, and butter. I made the eggplant recipe we learned form my roommates’ tutor’s mother.

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I can’t wait to come home and cook/bake. Steak, stuffed shells, chicken marsala, quesadillas, carrot cake, cookies, oh, my! These past week I made 3 batches of no bake peanut butter and chocolate cookies, but they weren’t the same… anyway.

This past month I haven’t had anything all that interesting to post about but I’ll try to create something for this post. This month I have been focusing on studying Chinese. Trying to find resources to diversify my methods of learning to try to make it more interesting, and to stimulate different parts of learning a language. ie, listening, reading, writing, and speaking.

This past year, I have seen a tremendous increase in my reading, listening, and writing skills. While most of my writing is in text message or email form, it is still useful. My vernacular has greatly improved because I have been reading more interesting things. Every Friday in Chinese class this semester we have been reading newspaper articles. One was about Prince Harry traversing the North Pole. One was about a mother being stabbed by her son when he returned from studying abroad only to find out that she doesn’t have any money to pay for his schooling. Another article was about how the number of Chinese research papers may surpass the US’s.

My vocabulary may have increased… but I’m still finding it really hard to speak. I still get the typical, “You speak so well” every time I say a word or two and it becomes discouraging. In fact, last night at Josh’s new awesome apartment, I was asked if I could speak Chinese by Josh’s realtor.  As I was tired and didn’t want to go through that whole conversation again, I just shook my head to say yes. He still didn’t quite understand, so he asked me (in Chinese) if I could understand what he was saying. I said, “听得懂“ I can understand and he said, “Oh, wow! Your Chinese is so good! It’s better than Josh’s!” (He was talking with Josh about real estate, and other randoms words that of course he didn’t know.) Speaking will just take time I guess…

Chinese Links

However, I do want to share some really great resources I’ve found. When my cousin said she’d like me to teach her some things in Chinese while I’m around over the summer, I sent her some links.

Ever wondered how to read Gong Bao Ji Ding (Kong pao chicken)?
This link is good for laying your foundation of learning Chinese: pinyin, the standard Romanization  system of Mandarin Chinese. I have many friends who have learned Chinese while being abroad and while they can speak pretty well and can survive, their pronunciation is quite terrible at times. In my opinion, you should first study pinyin, paying particular attention to how things are pronounced, then move on to learning everything else.

Here’s the website for the textbook I used in college. It is good for practicing listening to pinyin. I have a word document that you can follow along with and see the answers. If you want it, let me know and I’ll email you.

My favorite sites
Recently, I found these amazing book at Shenzhen Book City. They are also online at CCTV’s site. Mark Rowswell is the host of this TV show, Traveling in Chinese, and these books accompany them. They’re really good for people with a basic level of Chinese. There are also different levels of programs there to explore. It’s like a mini soap-opera, but they stop and go over the grammar.

All year I have been told to check out Chinesepod.com. I finally checked it out a couple weeks ago, and absolutely love the podcasts! At my level, it is exactly what I need, interesting topics to listen to and learn vocabulary. They also have a series called, “Qing Wen” which clarifies all the questions I have about using subtly different words. For example, in English we have just one word for “just.” I just want to learn a few words in Chinese. It’s just me. I’m just kidding. I just showered (a moment ago). I just came back from China. Chinese has, 只，就，而已，刚才，刚 to be used in those respective situations.

Chinesepod isn’t free though… I signed up and using my free seven days I downloaded as many podcasts as I could. However, now that my trial is over, I don’t get the benefits of being able to ask questions on the comments pages, or do any of the follow-up worksheets they have. Maybe I’ll invest in this. There’s also french and Spanish pod. Japanese podcasts are on a different website. I wish languages were easier to acquire…

Last, I’ll mention Skritter.com. While I don’t use it, I have some friends that swear by it. Used with a pen tablet, it can be very useful in remembering how to write characters. It uses some famous algorithm to determine what character from your list you need to write next so that you don’t forget it.

Happy Studying

Tomb Sweeping Day – 清明节

清明节 – Tomb Sweeping Day
Tuesday, April 5th, was Tomb Sweeping Day. We officially received Tuesday off, and Monday as well… However, we had to make Monday’s classes up on Saturday so that we could still have a three day weekend.

On one of Josh and Hilary’s Sunday afternoon “bike rides” (electric) they found a mass graveyard site on the mountains just north of Little Mei Sha (the smaller beach). We decided it’d be a good idea to visit them during the festival where they clean the tombs of ancestors, so we ventured towards them. Ryan and I did not have a bike so we took the bus.

It turns out the bus stop we thought we wanted was 15 or so stops before the stop we actually got off at (大鹏汽车展）. Luckily, however, we met a Chinese girl, Vivian, on the bus who Ryan and Elie had met recently. She also works at two fellow CTLCers school in DaMeiSha. She was heading to the same bus stop as us to visit some places nearby and take pictures. We decided to accompany her instead further to 大鹏所城 stop and check out the surroundings. If you follow the pictures to flickr and my map, you can see really how far we were from Shenzhen’s city center and Yantian beaches.

What we found was the Dapeng Fortress or Old City. 大鹏古城

Old Drum in Old City

It was neat to find people who still lived in this kind of neighborhood. The only thing to do in this kind of town was to play majiang and sing, said Vivian. She was right. Every four households had a majiang table with four players.

After the town we went and saw a brand new temple being built. It reminded me of how when new housing developments were going up around my house how we’d always go in and look at them still unfinished when I was younger. I wanted to explore it, but didn’t think it’d fly with the local workers and temple worshipers.

There wasn’t really much else to do, so we headed back home where my roommates’, Hilary’s, and Ben’s tutor was waiting. Even though I am at a higher level of Chinese than them, I usually keep my door open and listen to their lesson. I learn at least one thing per week, and it reaffirms what I’ve already learned.

Cooking Class
The previous Tuesday, their tutor’s mother came over and, for a price, taught us to cook duck! It was a standard Chinese recipe in that it included lots of ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and onions. We also cooked her favorite type of aubergine. The eggplant was so delicious, and the duck which when done being “steamed” or cooked in a boiling broth I guess, was even more delicious.

The whole time she was “teaching” us she was commenting on our lack of utensils, cookware, and Chinese speaking ability.
Still it was an experience I hope not to forget.

Hong Kong Sevens
Also, the weekend before that, March 25-27, some of us went to Hong Kong Sevens, a rugby tournament. Usually rugby is played with 15 players. However, Sevens are played with, you guessed it, seven players and matches are only 7 minute halves . We watched games next to the stadium in the free rugby-drinking-village.

It was fun as HK Sevens is Halloween all over again. The first night out we went out all in plaid and had funny names like, “I’ve been a plaid girl,” “Girl with the plaid tatoo,” and “Plaid Romance.” Everyone kept pronouncing it like “played”, but you have to admit it does look like its spelled wrong.

View of HK island from Kowloon Island

That weekend was filled with great food and great friends! I like HK again because of all the great food we had in the mid-levels/central area.

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Two weeks in Thailand just wasn’t enough.

Nora’s and Marissa’s scarf count: 15.
Inside jokes: a bijillion
Fellow travelers killed for being obnoxious: ZERO!
Modes of transportation taken: planes, trains, automobiles, buses (overnight/day), motorcycles, tuk-tuks, taxis, boats n’ ferries ‘n paddle boats, foot, and bicycles

We made it through Vietnam and Cambodia and arrived in Thailand. We only had half a day in Bangkok before we headed to Chiang Mai, so we camped out at the Mochit North Bus Station.

From there some of us walked over to the park to have a little rest. I ventured off alone to find and explore the Chatuchak weekend market nearby.

What I found mesmerized me. It was unlike any bazaar I’ve ever seen in my travels. I entered the forest of shops and found the animals and pets area of the thick. This area was like a vast leguminous plant. Each shop the pod of the plant selling their product. The tiny vascular alleyways carried customers from shop to shop who stopped to pet, and stare in awe at the adorable puppies, bunnies, birds, and chipmunk type animals.

I wandered some more through the dense vegetation when all of a sudden I came across an exquisite clearing of clothing. A look of seraphic contentment on my face, I started to explore the colorful assortment of clothes.
I quickly bought 4 pairs of fitted shorts, and darted out of the wood to inform my fellow travelers. We returned and found delicious “fruits and berries.” I thought to myself, “If this is what the rest of Bangkok is going to be like, I never want to leave.”

We arrived in Chiang Mai early the next morning, 5 AM, and, rested at our hostel, Eagle House, until our cooking class at 9. We decided what we were going to cook and headed off to the market to buy fresh ingredients. I decided to cook pat panang curry, phad thai, Chiang Mai curry noodles, golden parcels, and a chicken curry souflé.

We pressed grated coconut meat with warm-hot water and made fresh coconut cream to use in our dishes. The second press became coconut milk. Also, if you let the cream sit for a couple hours it will separate into layers allowing you to skim pure coconut cream off the top which we used for the mango sticky rice.

My favorite dish, by far was the pat panang curry, and the yellow curry someone else made. The golden parcels were also quite delicious.

The night market not too far from our hostel was where we found many foreigners and more good shopping.

With Eagle House we arranged a 3 day 2 night trek through Doi National Park to see isolated villages . The included food they cooked for us was so good! Yellow curry and delicious fresh fruits galore. This trek was a good bonding experience for the 12 of us. (Gen and Jenny from CTLC met us in Chiang Mai to cook and trek. Lucy and Adriene, two Brits who had worked full-time after graduation of junior college for 6 months and were now traveling for 6 months, were also in the group.)

Throughout the trek our guide, Tree, would stop along the “path” and grab fruits from local trees for us to taste. Tamarind, and mango are the only two I can remember at the moment…

The second night around the table we all went around the table trying to do British or American accents. After we played cheeky cheeky around the fire. Cheeky Cheeky is an awesome drinking game that is hard to explain but easy to show… It was a fun night.

Add elephants and bamboo rafts to our modes of transportation taken.

We were in Chiang Mai for 4-5 days and then headed back to Bangkok where we immediately caught a bus to Ko Chang, a small island off the eastern part of Thailand’s coast (near Laos almost).

We laid on the beach, drank fruit shakes, and became yellow curry snobs. If ever in Ko Chang in Southern part of Bai Lan Bay, go to the Coconut Café! Best Yellow curry ever! We also finally found Thai Iced tea! I LOVE THAI ICED TEA! This part of the island was very backpacker oriented. More bars with live bands, and a younger more western crowd. This was a very relaxing 4? days.

We spent our last 3 days in Bangkok where we were overwhelmed with the night life. The first night we went out it was just me, Lisa, and Jon as everyone else was too tired. The night market outside of the clubs was a bad/good idea…

M-150 was my life-force. We saw a show, danced till 5:30 am and then woke the next morning at 9:30 chipper and excited about the adventurous night. We soon went shopping and again the markets were so cheap and amazing. In the two days that we went shopping I spent less than $180 and bought an entire new wardrobe.

To save money on a hostel and since our flight was at 6:30 am we went to the airport around 2 am and slept/ waited. As soon as we sat down on the plane, having only slept a total of ~14 hours the previous 2 nights, I passed out. Three hours later we arrived in Hong Kong, where confusion and sleepiness ensued. I got separated from everyone and lost trying to get home. 5 hours later, carrying my bag, my extra bag of clothes bought in Bangkok, and Marissa’s bag, I finally made it to my house in Shenzhen.

South East Asian Winter Vacation was a success! After totaling it up I spent more than I wanted. Including airfare it was about $1600, two months’ salaries. I wish we had spent a little more time in certain places, as we kind of rushed through three countries not really relaxing all that much. However, we saw many things that most people never have the chance to and things I may never see again. The people I traveled with were great and the experience was one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

Places I want to (re)visit: northern Vietnam, more beaches in THAILAND, and Bangkok!

Most of these pictures courtesy of Nora and Marissa.

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Links:

Winter Vacation 2011

Flickr Map

Nora’s Pics

Part 2: Cambodia! Khmer and you’ll have a riel good time!

So I was going to wait for my pictures to upload to flickr but it’ll be another couple of days before I get back to Startbucks or somewhere with a faster internet before I can try to upload them again. Even at Starbucks today I’ve been having trouble uploading them. My pictures from the Angkor temples will just have to be at a lower resolution… which I’m still having trouble upload. Damn you Great Firewall of China!

P.S. from last post:
I updated my last post with some cool links and my iphoto map. If you don’t go directly to the web address I don’t know if you know whether or not I updated it.

Part 2 开始！

Who’s “we?” Since I haven’t mentioned it yet, it is the following people:

Nora, me, Hilary, Marissa, Jon, Lisa, Lydiann, Jim in front of the National Museum, Phnom Penh

Food
The food in Cambodia was really cheap! Cambodia as a whole is just really poor. However, in Phnom Penh we went to a more expensive restaurant and paid about $4-5 a dish. Our host, Jon’s friend Marina, must have been pretty well off. We thought to ourselves, “Wow! This is expensive.”

In Siem Reap there was the choice of western food (Mexican, Italian, real Ice Cream from Swenson’s, and American food too) that was, I think, better than China’s western food or $1 Cambodian street food (which is much like chinese street food)! The pineapple, mango, watermelon, and bananas were simply delectable, delightful, divine!

Again they had baguettes and I never wanted to stop eating them. However, they did not have the Nutella like they had at “Paradise.”

Phnom Penh
This is the capital of Cambodia. In Cambodia they speak Khmer and the monetary unit is the riel. The exchange rate is USD 1 = KHR 4,000.
(Vietnam is the dong and is USD 1=  VND 20,000 which I forgot to explain the title of the last post)

On the first day we saw the Killing Fields south of the city and the school that was converted to a prison, S-21. This again was another depressing, and solemn part of our trip.

The second day we went tried to see the Royal Palace, but since we had shorts and tank-tops on we were not allowed in. Nora and Marissa went the next morning though, before our bus out, and have some beautiful pictures. We also were being cheap and didn’t want to pay $6. Then we walked past the museum.

At some point we went to the Russian market and were able to get some really cheap things.

Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor
Siem Reap was probably one of my favorite places we visited during vacation. Angkor Wat was breathtaking during the sunrise at 5:30 am and the walls extraordinarily detailed. One can only imagine what it looked like in full splendor.

Angkor Wat

The 8 of

There's a gas powered bike that drives us along... tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk

us rented two tuk-tuks for two days and they drove us around from temple to temple. I can not describe how mesmerizing the temples truly were. In the morning and evenings everyday the sky was overcast. However, once the sun was out it was hot, and blue skies for miles, quite nice for taking pictures. Hopefully, my pictures do them justice.

Temples we saw were:
Angkor Wat is the main temple that everyone goes to see. Angkor Thom is where the movie Tomb Raider features people visiting. Also, Ta Prom, with the tree on top of the temple, was a location for the movie.

If you go to flickr and click on the individual photos you can see exactly where I was for most if not all of the photos. I did a pretty good job of putting the exact locations.

Day 3 we rented bicycles for $1 and rode around to some smaller temples. It was a rather enjoyable ~40km ride all day.

Unfortunately we had to leave Siem Reap, but after all three days of temples was enough. My favorites were Angkor Wat, Banteay Srei, and the Chinese funded reconstrution project Chau Say Tevoda. This one was less crowded as it was small. However, the colors of the stones were all mismatched…

Usual links:

Winter Vacation 2011

Check out my flickr map.

Nora’s Photos

Let me tell you what I learned in Nam: A little Dong goes a long way.

Winter Vacation 2011

After  taking my time to edit my photos, and then forever to upload them… I am ready to post about the first part of my trip!

I don’t really know what I want to write about but, I guess I’ll use some notes i pre-wrote and also summarize each country starting with Vietnam:

Food:

Beef peanut stir fry noodles that you pour a light fish oil mint sauce on top of – Bún bò xào. It was quite lite and fresh.
Phô ( fa), Vietnam’s noodle dish, reminded me of weger soup place back in Shenzhen. It wasn’t the best food I’ve had but, you can get it everywhere and its different at each restaurant.

I was really excited for the baguettes in VN! Thank you The French. Everywhere on the street vendors sold baguettes with real cheese, vegetables. It was delectable.
We even found an ice cream place much like pink berry!

We stayed in HCMC – a.k.a. Saigon to most locals, for ~3 days.

The fist day in Vietnam we visited the War Remnants Museum, independence palace or reunification palace, depending on which group you talk to.  The American War as it is known, is for the most part gone, and Vietnam is a tourist friendly country. However, at the museums you can see the devastating effects that the millions of gallons Agent Orange and other chemicals had on people. We left the War Museum feeling ashamed and despondent.

In Saigon there are ~9 million people. 6 million people own motor bikes!

The next day we took a day trip to the Cu chi (pronounced Gucci) Tunnels. These tunnel systems were used to hid from the American soldiers. It was interesting to see how you could turn something like war into a tourist destination complete with the ability to fire AK-47s and other firearms.

On the way to the tunnels they dropped us at Handicapped Handicrafts to show us the beautiful art that people effected by agent orange created.

The next day we ventured to Nha Trang. We took an 8 hr over night bus and it was pretty great to go to sleep and arrive at our destination early the next morning for $9. We then headed to Doclet an hour away from the “busy” tourist area to Paradise Resort where we stayed for only $20 a night. We received three meals, it was right on the beach and we could kayak.

The owner was a friendly Croatian born, French at heart, made his money in Switzerland, old man. It was a very relaxing 2 days. The 3rd day we spent back in Nha Trang where it actually was not peak tourist season and therefore not that crowded.

After heading back to HCMC the next day we took a tour of the Mekong Delta.

It was a 2.5 hour bus ride to the delta from Saigon. We learned that Vietnam is 2nd largest exporter of rice after Thailand. Most of it is from the delta. People conduct their business right on the river in the floating markets and hang what they’re selling from a pole to let buyers know.

We got off our tour boat to have some royal honey with tea and small citrus orange like those we find in SZ. It was rather tasty. We saw how coconut candy was made and all bought a package that we all ended up getting sick of after one or two pieces.

In Vietnam a local alcohol is snake wine. In the particular jar we sampled from there was also a bird with feathers.

The next half a day was riddled with boat rides, a mediocre lunch, empty river banks, and bus rides. We saw a small village and finally they dropped us off near a small city near Cambodia.

Overall, Vietnam was not very exciting for me. The people compared to Chinese were so much “happier” it seemed. They had senses of humour and cracked jokes at us. Tourism has definitely had an effect on the people. I do wish to spend some more time in the North of Vietnam and visit the capital and Halong Bay area.

Make sure your check out my map on flickr. I geo-tagged all my photos.
Here’s my map from iphoto!

Also, check out Nora’s photos from Vietnam.

Safe in Vietnam

I arrived safely in Vietnam this morning at 2am! I’m a millionaire! I took out 1.5 million dong from the ATM and we arrived at our hostel at 3:30AM paying the taxi driver 300,000 dong to get the eight of us from the airport to the hostel.
Its a nice area with bars and clubs that were open till the wee hours of the morning. The temperature is a cool 78.

2010 Holiday Season & Mini-Euro Vacation

Originally uploaded by Matt Day – 囯义

The 2010 holiday season was a blur. Christmas crept up on us and my Christmas lessons went over well with the kids.

Christmas Eve the Education Bureau threw us a dinner and bought us a night at a hotel. The dinner was actually kind of terrible, but it was nice to all be together and celebrate. People got on stage to play and sing songs. Then people went to the clubs, or just stayed in the hotel and drank where there was no cover. It was almost like being in Beijing again! I suddenly came down with the flu, so I was unable to stay awake past 8:30…

New Years Eve we went to an all you can eat sushi for 60 kuai place. It was good, but not excellent enough for me to want to go again. We then went to the bars and could only tell it was NYE because 10 seconds before midnight there was a countdown. The next day there were sales though however. Lisa’s friend from college, Joy, who is from Shenzhen, home for the holidays was also with us.
I stopped teaching classes two weeks ago and I’ve just been relaxing, studying Chinese, hanging out with my Chinese friend, and fixing my resumé. The last two days I was in Macau! Joy’s father has a job in Macau so they were nice enough to let us stay the night at their place.

Macau is a beautiful pair of islands. From customs the casinos all provide free shuttles. We took advantage both days and got to and from our destinations! I learned to play craps at the Sands, and the slots at the Venetian (威尼新人). The town, away from the casinos, was quaint. It was quite gorgeous. Everything was in traditional Chinese, but the architecture was European, and Portuguese. It was very interesting.

I got my share of free samples of meat jerky and peanut “candy.” We saw the fallen down church at 大三巴 （dasanba）which reminded me of “The Pillars of the Earth.” I also indulged and got a carmel apple spice from Starbucks, my favorite drink that they don’t have here in SZ. We ate Portuguese Egg Tarts, and pork chop sandwiches 猪扒包, both Macau specialties. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Macau. Mini-European Vacation.

The week before Macau I came down with the flu again… It’s odd how I keep getting sick. Maybe it’s the lack of heating, or maybe lack of nutrition. Anyway, I’m packing for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand now! I can’t wait for the food and the 80ºF weather!