On Wednesday night, the parents association at the school put on the Lantern Festival which consisted of games, snacks, face painting, a magician, tons of food and best of all tons of booze! That is one great thing about it here....if you attend one of the functions put on by the parent's association, there is always an assortment of wines and beers available. Never would you see this back home at a school. Amanda surprisingly got roped into face painting upon our arrival and the funny thing was that the other 2 face painters were very experienced artists. One is the student art teacher from Lethbridge and the other sells her work to the Pottery Barn! Amanda was a tad outclassed in the art category, but she definitely held her own, despite some girls not wanting her to do their faces and opting to wait longer for another face painter! I wish I had a pic, but the best was this little chinese boy that got a pink panther from Amanda...it was pretty good, but the way the boy was prancing around after was even better! Here is a pic of Amanda's work on Kaidyn's face!
Both of the kids had a blast that night, Kaid with the games and Klash playing soccer on the artificial pitch.
Since there was no school on Thursday and Friday this week, we decided to go to China on Friday for some shopping and to check things out. It may sound odd, but when people here say they're going to China, they mean they are going to mainland. It's just odd because technically, Macau is in China, but is its own country. So when we say we went to China...that means mainland China. We headed off to Zhuhai (northern tip of Macau) where the shopping is crazy. Amanda was only hoping to buy an umbrella, but that soon changed when we got there. Our friend Dane decided to join us as well, and did a great job of being our tour guide since he and his wife have been here 3 years now. In order to enter China, everyone had to have a visa. You can purchase 6 month visas, but with the 4 of us, it is just too pricey. We opted to get a single visit visa for our family and met a guide at the border who helped us get through with no problems. The border is really a huge nice facility and modern. Not your typical lift gates with soldiers and guns!
As soon as we crossed the border, there was a multi-level underground shopping mall that is HUGE. You can find anything here..clothing, electronics, shoes, art, music, dvds, bags etc. Keep in mind that almost everything for sale is fake, but you can not afford to not buy things for next to nothing prices. First order of business was to get money, which is renminbi in China (1 rmb=$0.15 CAD). We hadn't even been there 5 minutes and Amanda was already bartering with a vendor for Kylisha's umbrella. He starts with 65 rmb, Amanda counters with 20, he says no and Amanda starts walking away, he quickly chases after her and says 45 and Amanda ends up with it for 40 rmb which is $6 CAD. Nice work already. Imagine walking into a shopping mall and being able to haggle on prices on EVERYTHING....this is exactly what its like in Zhuhai.
Next up was the DVD store and boy was it great. Everything in here is pirated (I wouldn't think of stealing anything!), nicely packaged and best of all CHEAP. We bought a Lego movie, Seasons 1-3 Private Practice, Entourage-every season, a Wii game and an XBOX game for around $30 CAD!!!!! The video games were just over $1 each! It turned out the xbox game did not work, but the Wii game worked like a charm.
Next, Dane brought the girls to the place his wife gets all her manicures and pedicures done. $5 CAD each for a full on pedicure (whatever that includes), but I'm told that is a steal of a deal and it took them almost an hour to finish. While the girls were finishing up, Dane took me up to street level for a stroll to a bike shop. Even though we could see the buildings in Macau, Zhuhai was definitely chinese! There were absolutely no english signs, beggars were present (many with missing limbs), litter everywhere, no scooters but lots of motorbikes and they drove on the right side of street. I was dumbfounded that the 2 cities were so close, almost connected, but had 2 totally different environments. Macau is like "China for dummies" because it is so westernized. We will most likely stick with the underground mall when we go to Zhuhai.
After the girls were done, we stopped at a sushi place for lunch. There were tables around the perimeter of the sushi bar and in between was a conveyor belt with sushi that passed you by. If you wanted something, you grabbed and ate it. They kept tabs on your bill by the number of empty plates on the table. Dan and I had sushi, while Amanda had a sweet looking soup and Klash had tempura and a beef rice dish. Of course Kaidyn wouldn't eat any of anything, so I grabbed him a kids chicken nugget meal at KFC. It cost more for the KFC than it did for 2 video games!!!!!! I likey a lot! I love wasabi, but I've never had wasabi this hot before! I usually use all the wasabi I can get back home so I proceeded to do the same here, but little did I know that this wasabi was about a trillion times hotter than normal! The first bite made my eyes well up and it felt like my eyeballs were going to melt! It was so good though! We all had a good laugh as Dane and I took turns welling up with each bite.
On our way back home, we had to call the guide to help us back into Macau. We called her number and no answer. We called again and again for the next 30 minutes and no answer! We were tired and just wanted to go home so we tried to talk to many officials and police officers and then out of nowhere, the guide appears. She didn't seem to care much that we were waiting, but that is just the culture here...people just go by their own schedule.
Amanda had some training today at the school on a reading and spelling program the school uses, and then her new friend Annette took her to Senado Square for a hair cut. She said the hair washing part was worth the price of 2 haircuts, as it involved A LOT of massaging! She loves the girl who cut her hair and will definitely be back (the cut was less than $20 CAD for anyone who was wondering).
Until next time...
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