The first is the wonderful variety of nationalities among the exchange students, who hail from, in addition to mainland China, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, and the U.S. As a result, our Susquehanna students are getting an exposure to diversity that ranges far beyond Macau and China. At last night’s orientation dinner the karaoke was quite the mix of styles and languages!
The second is the variety of food. On the first night of orientation, the University of Macau administrator who oversees exchange students deliberately took the group to a restaurant that serves, er, unusual foods. It reminded me of a coffee mug I had years ago, with the inscription: “Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you all day.” The administrator, Grace Chau, told us that after this meal nothing else we encountered the entire semester would be so different. We hope she was right; our meal included cuttlefish, pig brain, chicken feet, snake, frog, sand worm, field worm, and the piece de resistance, silk worm larvae. I’m not kidding. Nobody died, and nobody even got sick. It convinced Elaine and me that under extreme situations, we were capable of ingesting protein we never imagined eating. And, the next night, at a Portuguese restaurant, we dived right in to oxtail soup, beef tongue, and fried pig neck as though they were no challenge at all!
The third is captured just a bit in the photos we took over the past few days:
Here is a “neighborhood” of high-rise apartments about a kilometer from the campus. Interestingly, it was shot from a beautiful nature trail that winds around and to the top of a wooded and uninhabited hill nearby.
We strolled through a section of “old” Macau, which is full of narrow streets with laundry hanging from windows and motor scooters everywhere.
One of the many charming churches, this one in Coloane Village at the southern end of Macau.
And those who want a glimpse of the ultra-modern Macau are invited to Google “venetian macau” to see the newest – and world’s largest – casino/entertainment/shopping complex.
