Another Day On The Island

My good buddy has a blog with all kinds of stories and cool pictures so I thought maybe it would be fun to start one myself. And, here it is. I'm Mike. I just turned 26. I live in Macau SAR. I've never lived abroad before, and although this is my first experience I'm going to go ahead and say as far as foreign places go this one is pretty fuckin' foreign. I moved here with my wife, Claire, about four months ago. We've settled in pretty well, but it becomes more and more apparent that we will never be locals. The local language is Cantonese. Maybe living in a culture of native Cantonese speakers was foreshadowed when as a kid my favorite dish from House of Hunan was chicken cantonese. Maybe not. At any rate, it's a tough one to decipher. But, we have high hopes. Certain tones are starting to sound familiar and some phrases are beginning to stand out. And, there's always the Phrasefinder. We're keeping our fingers crossed, keeping our ears open, and smiling real big. And, hey, if we talk real fast they can't understand us either so that sort of evens things up.