A New Home

We moved into our new apartment yesterday. I'm really really glad we decided to live away from the city. This is a great place to be. The commute to get stuff done - Chad's work, grocery stores, etc. - is hopefully not too bad, and it is soooo nice to have access to grass and trees and not to feel crowded by people and cooped up all the time. I feel a lot better about being in Macau in general today. We spent the last two weeks in a couple of hotels because the apartment we were originally going to move into didn't work out. Basically to rent an apartment here you have to go through an agent who happens to know the owner who is renting out that certain apartment - there is no MLS or access to anything near a comprehensive list of available properties (for buying or renting). The agent that told us about the apartment we planned to move into was hard to deal with - didn't answer our questions truthfully and when we got here we learned it wasn't going to work out. Thankfully we found another apartment in the same area - not as nice but also not as expensive.

Today there was a typhoon. The busses didn't run and it was super windy and rainy. We went for a walk in the storm and explored (Chad was home too because of the typhoon). It was cool to check things out and pretty memorable to be out there with such strong wind!

Two days ago I was feeling pretty frustrated and wrote a post that I later took down because I didn't want to come across so negative. I'll post it here still for history's sake. It really hasn't been easy to do all this moving and figuring out this new place. And in a lot of ways going to a country like this one is like going back in time - dealing mainly with cash instead of credit cards, less efficient (at least as we see it) ways of doing things, less user friendly apartments, customer relations, etc., and different ways of viewing what matters and what doesn't. It'll be good for us. We need to lighten up and slow down anyway.

Anyway, here's the previous post:

I'm sitting in a hotel lobby with my laptop so I can use the hotel's wifi. It's slow and I'm not sure if this will post. Nonetheless, thought I'd record our day - let's go backwards from here.

I just pulled the small lobby table over and folded my legs up on the couch. A guard came over and told me to take my feet off the couch. I put a foot down and proceeded to do my thing. He indicated that wasn't good enough. I put both my feet on the floor with a sour look.

I feel like an angry teenager here. I totally get it. [lots of run-ins with guards all the time. I think they like to hire lots of people here so some people's jobs are just to make sure nothing abnormal happens - we are all about climbing stuff, running around barefoot, exploring, etc. and guards don't like that stuff.]

Jozie, Haven, and I went to dinner tonight at a place called Cafe E.S. Kimo. We got some good things and for a great price - under 20 USD and it included ham and cheese paninis and tater tots. While at the restaurant Jozie had to poop. We went into the bathroom and the only option was a squat pot. I told her I thought she should hold it, but she really wanted to go. So, she figured it all out herself and it worked out fine.

After dinner we walked back to the hotel and the street was full of smoke and ashes. I looked around for what was on fire and it was people burning things for their ancestors in a large tin can. It was a bigger fire than normal - usually they do it in smaller cans than that one.

Earlier, we ate lunch at the (marvelous!!!!) Subway we found the other day - third time we've eaten there in about that many days. It's awesome. After lunch we stopped at a random salon to cut Jozie's hair. She's been wanting to cut it short. So, we walked in and told the guy there she wanted a haircut. She sat down and he proceeded to freestyle cut her hair straight across - no water, no comb, no separating layers. After that he got out a shaver to "fine tune" everything, but in the front one side was almost an inch longer than the other and the whole thing was very choppy and uneven. I came over and asked him if he knew how to cut girls' hair. He said he did and continued cutting. After a couple minutes I said "Do you have experience with girls' hair?" and showed him the problems. Luckily there was a lady in the shop who could mostly fix it up. Seriously.

We're on day 12 of hotel living. Chad signed a contract for an apartment tonight. I haven't seen it but have seen similar ones. We're glad to move on out of hotels but there are many more challenges ahead. Every day is full of adventure and frustration. You just expect that whatever it is you're trying to accomplish will take much longer than you think it will and will probably take more than one or two attempts.

Anyway, there's the other post (mostly).

Here's a picture of Jozie's short hair - not a great pic after we were playing in the rain but I'll get better ones up soon! I'll also try to post pics of our apartment soon.