Sunday Funday!

Thus far during my time in Macao, I could probably count the number of gweilos I have seen/met. The Spanish call us gringos, the Thai's call us farangs and the Chinese call us gweilos, meaning pale ghost or foreign devil. In reference to foreigners. Rest assured, I have not actually been called this (to my face), but I new most cultures have a term such as this for westerners, so I asked someone. Anyways, this all changed on Sunday.

One of the IFT English teachers I had met earlier in the week told me about an open sailing day that a local sailing was putting on Sunday. It was open to the public and anyone could come out and learn to sale the dinghies, a small one or two person sailboat. I thought this sounded like a great idea, spend some time in the sun, go sailing for the first time in my life and meet some people all for free?! What a deal! So I hopped a bus to Hac Sa, which is one of two beaches in Macau. Hac Sa is pretty much the southern most point of Macau, situated on the southwest corner of Coloane. I got there at 10:00 am and got of the bus not exactly sure where I was going, I just knew it was at that beach. I looked way down the beach and saw some sailboats about a half mile or so down, so I had a wonderful walk along the beach on my way down. This wasn't your picturesque Caribbean beach, with beautiful soft white sand. It was super grainy sand with a lot of debris and stuff washed up in it. People were still out playing around, it just wasn't super crowded.

I finally made my way to the sailboats and approached the first gentleman I saw and introduced myself. His name was Dennis and he was a pilot from France. He offered to take me out, so I took him up on it. He didn't get too technical showing me the general stuff such as tacking and jibbing. It was a good time, but it wasn't too windy so we did not get very much speed. After we came back ashore, I headed up to the base camp.

Up there I met many expatriates from al over the place, England, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, it was great! There were three gentleman that run the Macau Youth Sailing Association. They started it a year ago, because there was no sailing at all in Macau, so they started it with the hopes of educating youth about sailing. It seems to be doing well, there were about 20 kids out sailing when I arrived. The group of sailing enthusiasts was made up of teachers and pilots of all ages. It was great to meet people, some taught grade school at the international school, some taught english and some taught at the Universities in Macau. One lovely woman, Leander, actually runs the career center at St. Joseph's University, so we had some chatted about student affairs and higher ed, it was great. I really appreciated this groups hospitality, they shall be a great resource during my time here! Through them I already have some leads on climbing and a few other local activities.

Until next time

Brent