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I’m back again in Macau, starting my second year of teaching. Many of my friends here ask, “how was your summer?” My answer often includes several of these words: fabulous, fantastic, family, friends, and fun times! Sadly, seven weeks went by far too fast.

Mid-summer, I had rented car for three weeks with a milage limit of 3000km. With careful planning, I managed to criss-cross B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. I returned the car on time, with only 11km over the limit. Fortunately, I wasn’t charged the extra mileage. Although I would have loved to spend more time with everyone, I do treasure the time I did have with as many people as I could get to see. I took lots of pictures, shared stories, created new memories, and stocked up on hugs!

click on the Photo Album to see more pictures

         * under “All Categories” look in the “summer memories” album – enjoy

Thank you everyone for your e-mails and notes of concern – all is well here in Macau. We live about 3000km away, and fortunately, at the time the disaster struck, we were at low tide, so any change in water levels didn’t directly affect our area.

However, for about 6 years, one of our teachers here on staff did live quite close to the area that was struck by the tsunami. As she waited, for news from friends and adopted Japanese family, she did some research and discovered these charities listed below are well-established in Japan and 90% or more of the donations go to the cause (rather than administration fees and whatnot).  If you wish to help, you might want to give to one of the charities below:

http://www.savethechildren.org/
http://american.redcross.org/
http://www.worldvision.org/

thank you, ck

” Two giant pandas named Kai Kai and Xin Xin — after “kaixin,” the Chinese word for “happy” — arrived in Macau Dec. 18 to help the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) celebrate its 10th anniversary. The fluffy pair were given by China’s central government as a gift to the SAR. The gift was announced by President Hu Jintao during a visit to Macau on Dec. 19 last year.” (http://english.cntv.cn/)

Panda fever has hit the Macau area! Everyone is quite excited that long awaited pavilion is open and ready. Banners announcing their arrival are up everywhere. This week, several classes from TIS were very excited to get the opportunity to go see the new Giant Panda pair at the local zoo. The tour was very well organized, lots of extra adults were on hand to help supervise the groups of 50 students during the 10 minute viewing. As there was no guarantee that the pandas would be awake, we were quite delighted that one of the two pandas was not only wake, she seemed to be entertaining us while  eating her bamboo lunch. After our visit through the pavilion, we were treated to a 15 minute Chinese entertainment presentation. The troup, dressed panda-like, gave an outstanding performance – all and all it was  a great field trip