I was at a well known food establishment today (I won’t say the name, but it rhymes with “McFonald’s”). I am practicing my Mandarin (week two of lessons, yeah!) and asked them “How much?”. Then said, “Lower price, is it ok?”. Of course I knew they would say no, after all, it was “McFonald’s”. They were so happy I was speaking Chinese that they actually gave me a free meal upgrade. An upgrade of two MOP, or 25 cents USD. I feel very rich today.

On a sidenote, someone is encouraging me to take a video each week as I study Mandarin to show what I can say. I’ve done one minute videos the first two weeks, and it’s very embarrassing. But you’ll probably see them posted here soon because I think it’s very funny to watch myself try and speak Mandarin. I’m learning to write Chinese too. Fun stuff! (Though I’m admittedly very bad at it).

*Someone just wrote me and said “this could’ve been a C-flat”. Ouch, that’s bad!*

I finally got to ride the elephants! That was one of the things I wanted to do while visiting Thailand. This was my first full vacation since relocating to China with Cirque Du Soleil. We spent three days in Bangkok and four days in Phuket, Thailand.

In the picture above I am getting a massage from a baby elephant. Believe it or not – he actually cracked my back for me and it felt great. A true Thai massage!

This was a really great touristy ghylo tour – complete with elephant rides, ox rides, Thai cooking class, elephant show, monkey show, rice farming tutorial and demonstration of rubber tree harvesting – and an exhibition of Thai Boxing. Very fun stuff. This was my favorite tour that we took.

My friend Olivier was not very excited about riding the elephants and went along just because he knew I was looking forward to it. But he was amazed to watch the driver control the elephant with his feet movements and Thai verbal instructions.