Long Weekend!

Well I am having my first long weekend. Monday is a holiday because it is Chinese National Day. There are actually a lot of holidays here. There are the traditional Macanese holidays, the Chinese holidays and they celebrate most Christian holidays. Unfortunately, our school can't take all the holidays or we wouldn't have enough days in our school year.

Anyway, I spent the day at the beach yesterday with several of the teachers from my school. It was a great day! We go to the beach, play around in the water for a bit, then head off to the pool next to the beach. While the beach is nice here, the sea water is somewhat dirty (and several of the teachers actually got a rash last time they swam in it!). So we spend most of our time swimming in the pool, which is very nice. Kind of reminds me of the pool at third beach in Stanley Park in Vancouver. It was a great day for it too, the usual high of 30 and about 80% humidity. It is funny though, people think it is starting to cool off here. I notice that there are more cool breezes which makes things more comfortable, but I definietly would not say it is cooling off. We were sad to find out that the pool we were at will close at the end of next month until May. Things like that are on a schedule, no matter how nice the weather may be.

Today I am off to do some more exploring. There is an old lighthouse on the top of a mountain in Macau. I think Kevin and I are going to find a way to climb up to it. It looks pretty amazing. Tomorrow some of the teachers are going to go for a bit of a hike up a mountain on the other island (Coloane). It is supposed to be quite beautiful up there, and one of the few places in Macau that really isn't populated. I have heard there are some large snakes up there...not too excited about that...I found out another interesting, fun fact...cobras are actually native to Coloane. On second thought, maybe I won't go for that hike after all...

Will write again soon, hopefully with no snake stories to share.