Traveling/Day 1 continued

I finally boarded the Turbo Jet Ferry that took me across the bay Macau! Read a good article about the Shanghai Expo, it is going to be awesome (the Macao building is shaped like a rabbit, so funny). Upon arrival in Macau I went straight through immigration with zero problems. I walked into the main galley of the ferry terminal and was looking for some students from IFT who were to be waiting for me with my name on a sign. There had to be nearly 50 different people waiting to pick someone up with a name on a sign...luckily every single sign I looked at was in Chinese, making it easy to find my name. I had to wait for a bit as I could not find the at first, but finally I spotted them in the the back of the galley with a sign that read Welcome Brent Riley McCauley.

I approached them and they new I was the one right away because out the 300+ people in the waiting area, I was the only American and the only blonde. "Hello Brent Riley!" they said (they must have pulled it from my resume), I informed them they could just call me Brent and they laughed. My hosts names were Larry and Lizzie and they were great. They immediately took my luggage and we headed to the taxi. They were both second year students, same as sophomores in the US. Like in the US they graduated High School at/around 18 then went to college. Lizzie was studying Tourism Event Management, while Larry was studying Retail and Marketing Management.

They were wonderful hosts, they took me to my hostel then gave me a quick mini-tour of the campus, where we grabbed lunch. Lunch on campus was really good. I had orange pumpkin soup, rice, boiled eggplant and dried pork chop for 16 Pacata, which is the equivalent of $2.23. Pretty awesome deal. After lunch Larry showed me around the neighborhood, we stopped by the supermarket to pick up some water, went to the bank to exchange x money and picked up a sim card and bus pass. I then returned to the hostel (which is a normal apartment building, I'll give you the tour later).

Back at the Hostel, one of my roommates was there. William is a 4th year student studying business management. He seemed somewhat reserved at first, but I came to find that he did not want to disturb me while I was unpacking. I told him to forget about it and we chatted for a while. Later in the evening I met my other roommate Terry. FYI Larry, Lizzie, William and Terry are all Chinese students, they just go by their english names.

Today I have a free day and the best part about living with tourism students is they can set up a whole day of activities. William sat down and went through me the entire map of Macao, showing me just about everything, or at least plenty to keep me busy. So I am off!

Brent