Macau Musings

This is my first posting from Macau. These first few days have been busy as I’ve been filling out forms and navigating the local bureaucracy. Progress has been made on many fronts, although I’m not “finished” yet. The bad is that there is a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. The good is that resources for accomplishing what I want to do are available.

I’m just getting to know and understand the students at the University of Macau. I’m teaching two undergraduate classes this semester, one in Interpersonal Communication and the other in Intercultural Communication. Both are for non-majors. Most students are local residents of Macau. A sizeable minority come from other parts of China, and some are international. In my intercultural class I have two students from Japan who are English majors. They are polite students. Yet what is bothersome is that many come to class late. I’m trying to break this habit by commenting on it (it is disrupting to me when they come in 10-20 minutes late while I’m talking), and holding quizzes at the very beginning of class. I did this with both classes, but did not count the grades. Next time I will. Another thing that bothers me is that these students’ classes, with few exceptions, are conducted in English. Yet I can tell from their writing and speaking that most are not strong in English. I think it is a mistake for the university to instruct so many courses in English only, and would prefer it if there were a mix of languages. My fear is that students are not comprehending as much as they should, and the quality of their education is lessened. Of course, I do enjoy speaking and using Chinese in the classroom. Yet I’m also having a difficult time adjusting and figuring out what interests these students. I recall that when I started teaching at the University of Oklahoma this was a challenge for me in the first several years. But with time I got better. In fact, I believe that my last semester at OU was my best—indicated by the highest teacher evaluation scores I’ve ever received. It may take me a year or two to get the feel of teaching here. But I’m confident I’ll learn.

As a place, Macau is both good and bad. I’ll start with some of the bad. The air quality is worse than expected—worse than it was during my two previous visits June, 2011 and April, 2008. Since I’ve been here every day there is a brown haze, which must be coming from factories and power plants nearby. When looking in the direction of Macau peninsula, and toward Zhuhai, I cannot see much. With the winds blowing mostly from the north and west, the pollution is blowing this way. But when the weather warms up in the spring, the direction of the winds will change and the air should get better. Fortunately, the air quality is not “terrible” here. There have not yet been any days when the air has a taste to it and causes a scratchiness in your throat, as they would sometimes do when living in Taipei in the 1990s.

The good, I have found wonderful running paths on the nearby “mountains” of Xiao (small) Tanshan and Da (big) Tanshan. The university is located right between these. I run down the hill, along sidewalks for a short ways, then climb up to wide dirt paths that run around the circumference of each. In this way I can quickly find wooded areas and look down at the surrounding landscape. This is great and will help me keep my sanity. I also enjoy the food. There is a great variety of reasonably priced restaurants, that in USD are 3-5 dollars. Of course there are more expensive places, but I go to those only when someone else is paying. I’m getting to know my colleagues and they are all friendly. But I sense that I am the outsider and need to work at developing these relationships.

This past Sunday I went to the park that is located near the Venetian Casino and encompasses the row of houses built by the Portuguese in the 1920s. When I visited in June the lotus pond was full of flowers. Now the lotus are dormant, but they’ve built a beautiful gardens next to it where I took lots of pictures. This is adjacent to the tourist area that has wonderful restaurants and shops.