Made in Macau

             One of the most surprisingly interesting things to see when you are in a completely different place than what you're used to is going to their supermarkets. Yeah, I'm not joking, this is what I'm talking about this week. But it really is interesting to see what are popular items among the general population and get an opportunity to see things that you'd never otherwise see in a normal store. Yeah, the supermarkets carry a lot of what one would call "normal" grocery items: butter, cereal, juice, etc. But just how many of you have seen this kind of stuff in your local supermarket? Durian              Maybe you've encountered this fruit before, but it's no lie that it's pretty popular here, for whatever reason. If you've never heard of durian before, it smells... like, really bad. And when there is a table with 100 of them just sitting there, you are simply assaulted by the horrible smell of sewage. I haven't tasted it, but

             These past few days have been pretty jammed packed with running around, carrying heavy things, and cooking! The University of Macau's Open Day is a day where hundreds of people come to campus for tours, activities, lectures, and a bunch of other stuff. One of the other stuff is the International Food Festival, and a bunch of the exchange students and foreign full time students take part. We formed teams, bought ingredients, and had to make a lot of food in order to get people to vote for us as the best. I decided to form a group with Natasha and Vanessa, but since they are local students and not American, we got some pretty confused people. But we did it anyway, cuz friends.              I decided on making mac and cheese, due to the fact that it's simple and I don't know how to cook, let alone for hundreds of people. BUT. I didn't want to make boring mac and cheese, instead, I decided to make Sausage and Pepper Mac and Cheese, and they get capital lett

             I now have only a little more than 1 month left in Macau. I don't think I'm ready to leave the life of being able to travel around and meet so many cool people that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to meet back at home. Of course, I'm happy that I'll be with my family again, prepare for my senior year with my school friends, and eat a lot of American food, but I do feel like an era of my life is coming to an end. A pretty short era actually, it's only been 5 months. At this point, I'm scrambling to make sure I do whatever I still want to before I go home, like skywalking on the Macau Tower, going to Guangzhou, going back to Hong Kong, and going to a theme park in nearby mainland. So much to do in such little time, I hope I can accomplish it. But let's get into what I really wanted to talk about this week: the English Table.              Whenever you want to meet other people in a casual setting, the cafeteria is usually the best place fo

This video sums up my feelings quite well.               At this time I am back in Macau after a 10 day long trip to Bali, Indonesia. I'm slightly peeling from sunburn and have an achy and swollen finger from an unfortunate encounter with a volleyball (I'm not very athletic), but all and all, I'm wishing for those beach days once again! Perhaps the best time we spent on this trip was on the beaches of Nusa Lembongan. It's not that the many other things we did in the other locations in Bali weren't as great, it's just that it was so hot and humid that I was so passionately wishing for a beach breeze and swimming in beautiful water.  The Devil's Tear. dun dun dun... Phase #1: The Wave Phase #2: The Splash               One of the best things I saw in Lembongan was something called "The Devil's Tear." Ominous, right? Well it's a large cove on the coast where the waves violently crash into the cliffs surrounding it. You can bas

The Rice Terraces              Greetings my lovelies. For the past few days, my friend Margarida and I have been fortunate enough to travel around Bali! Thursday and Friday were spent in the Ubud area where a lot of cultural adventures were to be had. The first stop was to the rice terraces. I don't think I've ever seen anything so green! It was practically a hike to get around to different parts, but we took plenty of pictures. Actually, we took way  too many pictures during these past few days in general. After that, we made our way to the Batur Volcano. We thought that we would be able to hike up the volcano, but it appears that you can't really do it without getting in contact with a tour group. We had to settle for a pretty view.                But that's ok! We ended up doing something really fun: coffee and tea taste testing! Bali is apparently big in the coffee business, especially for a very... special kind. Basically, they feed the beans to an animal ca