This post pretty much skips the first week I have been in China, but I figure I need to start getting something on here. I will try to point out when things are out of order.

On Saturday morning, we went to our school to get our classrooms ready. Unfortunately, our materials were not available yet. I also found my room locked, just after we were assured that all of the rooms were open for us. Heather, next door to me, had been working in her room, but when she closed her door, she accidentally locked herself out. I jumped through her chest-height open window to get back in. Apparently it was a rather impressive feat. I’m sorry I didn’t have someone take a picture. Her art room had two ping pong tables and a drum set. My room was finally opened. It had not been cleaned at all, but I did have a huge stack of chairs. I arranged 25 in a semi-circle and then left with my fingers crossed that it would get cleaned before Sunday’s meet the kids and families orientation.
Susan, Nikki and I decided to take a ferry over to Macau. It turns out we did get multiple entry visas after all! Many others of our group also planned to go, but they were not ready to leave yet. Also, personally, I would rather travel with 3 people than with 20, so I was happy to get going.
Macau was transferred to China from Portugal in 1999, and like Hong Kong, you have to go through customs to get there from China. It both is and is not the same country. It also has its own currency.
Some people had told me not to bother going to Macau, that it was just like Las Vegas. I had also heard that it was definitely worth a day trip to see the contrasting cultures. As I prepared to go on this trip, this happened a lot. Every opinion I got as friends recounted their experiences in China was met by an equal and opposite reactions. Go to Macau, don’t bother, it’s horrible. There’s nowhere to visit near Shenzhen, or you could go here or here or here. You’ll love the food, you’ll hate the food.
From the ferry we took a free shuttle to the MGM Grand, which seemed to be near the downtown area. We looked for a restaurant with Portugese influence. We stopped at the first one we found, which was still basically on the strip area, but we were very hungry for lunch and it was quite good. I had steamed vegetables, all clearly recognizable, in a light garlic sauce. Susan had fried rice served in a pineapple. I would have liked to eat more of the pineapple, but it wasn’t served with the rice and didn’t really seem to be in the rice either. The menu indicated these were both Macanese dishes. They were different enough from what we’ve been eating that it was a nice change of pace.
So for the rest of the day, we walked and walked and walked. The buildings were great– giant Vegas-style casinos, pastel Mediterranean-style buildings, narrow Chinese streets. Many of the large apartment buildings had art deco style ironwork on their patios, windows and fences. There was a colorful temple (A-Ma), though we arrived too late to go inside it.

We took the last ferry back to Shekou (our suburb of Shenzhen) and arrived home with several more stamps on our passports.

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