Finishing off the reading break

On Thursday, Virginia wanted to take us to mainland China so that we knew how to get there safely! Also, they did not want to tell the VP that we had gone to Thailand, as his view of a 'Reading Break' varies from that in North America! Whoops! You receive an entry slip every time you come into Macau & we originally thought that this would say 'Bangkok', so Virginia & Helen wanted us to get another one that said 'China' or 'Hong Kong'. Turns out it didn't matter as the carbon copy of this slip doesn't reveal that information! Either way.. it was good to know how to get to mainland. It's so easy! You take a bus that is just around the corner from us, walk to the border, go through a few custom windows & then you're there! In & around the actual border gates is quite sketchy. Virginia gave us some tips on not how to get ripped off. She says that the robbers will try to distract you with something, so don't fall for it, always have your bag in front of you (& be careful that they don't slice it to get the contents out), & never help anyone with anything, even if they ask. She says that these thieves are very fast, aggressive & skillful! I think that as long as we're smart, we'll be ok.

She showed us a couple of places to get some good deals, & the areas where you bargain & those that you don't. Having just returned from Thailand, we were very disappointed to see how expensive things seemed in comparison. We'll just have to sharpen up our bargaining skills a little more. One thing that China is not short of - rip off designer goods! Oh my goodness... everything you could imagine! Gucci, coach, converse, abercrombie, rolex, etc. It was everywhere! It is however illegal to bring these goods out of China. So we've been told that as long as you're not obviously carrying pirated goods, then you are fine. I really don't know how much of this stuff I'll buy, and I'd be terrified of getting into trouble!! (like the nerd I am:) Going through customs on the way back, they were so picky about all of our stamps on our passport. They kept me at the window for about 10 minutes & then when Hong went through, they actually asked her questions about why she's in Macau for so long. They usually never utter a single word to you.

Luckily, the next day we were scheduled to meet the VP to go to the Immigration's office to sort out our visa documents. What a waste of the morning! We get there, they tell us that it's not ready & that we can stay in the country for 20 additional days anyways because we had been across the border the day before. So, we have to go back on the 24th of March to hopefully get our visa this time. We went back to the 2/3rd school to meet Virginia as she needed one of us to record a few passages for a General Knowledge English contest that they are holding. It was about 9:50am and we couldn't do this until 11am, so Hong & I had to hang around for a while waiting for Janice, who had the recording device. Normally, we would have just gone wandered around, but it was pouring buckets of rain out! Virginia even mentioned that the weather might progress to 'black rain'... which is a really heavy amount of rain where the city just shuts down, most people return home, but if it's not safe to do so, then you have to stay where you are until it lets up. With black rain follows mudslides, typhoons, etc at times. Scary! My umbrella kicked the bucket the other day, and Hong's was on its way out... so we really had no choice but to stick around. After the recording, we went out for some Chinese/Portuguese food with Virginia & she FINALLY let us pay for it! Our mission after lunch was to find new umbrellas & boy, did we ever! We didn't skim out on cash this time & bought a superman strength umbrella. The only problem is, it's really big & when it rains everyone has an umbrella out & it's just like a jigsaw puzzle getting through the crowds with all of the umbrellas. I even got dragged a few steps one day, as this girl's umbrella got stuck in my hair & she didn't notice (not even after I screamed and followed with her umbrella poking into my head)... ouch!

The next couple of days were devoted to getting work done! We fell behind a little while in Thailand, so I've just been getting some reading done & writing some papers. It's raining out a lot... so it isn't so bad being inside. Tomorrow, I will focus on planning some activities for the grade ones & kindergarten students - should be fun!