Curso de Verão: Update #1

7.13.15

    5:45 AM. Can't sleep; woke up around four-something. I'm in a common room down the hall from my room, which means I'm without air conditioning. This is going to be a regular occurrence, and I wonder how much more quickly I and these brand-new buildings are going to fall apart due to constant exposure to humidity. Whether or not that's a factor, you can already see things crumbling at the edges: that's what happens when a place this big is built so quickly.
    The University of Macau's new campus houses 10,000 students; I'd wager it's big enough for three times that. Who knows if they'll ever reach that level of enrollment. The outsized buildings, the empty paths and streets (yes, it's summer, but I don't see this place ever feeling crowded, which is a first for China), the sluggish waterways and propped-up trees all lend to the feeling of hasty realization of grandiose plans. It's easy to mock the newborn ugliness of the place, but not really worth it. After all, better that all that casino money be spent on education instead of reclaiming more land to build more casinos, right?
    That's how I see it, and being a short-term foreign student I'm in no position to divine the intentions of the Macau SAR and the University administration. All I can do is speculate wildly- or more likely halfheartedly, since it's too hot to do anything wildly- and pay attention to what I came here for: the 29th Annual Portuguese Language and Culture Summer Course.

    My correspondence with Ana Nunes and Ricardo Moutinho, the coordinators of the XXIX Curso de Verão de Língua e Cultura Portuguesa, in the months leading up to my arrival in Macau was always informative and affable, despite a certain degree of bureaucratic feet-dragging leading up to the official announcement of the course. When I get to campus, drop my things off in my room (where my roommate's things are proof that he exists, though he isn't present), and head over to the Faculdade de Humanidades building, I'm pleased to discover that Professores Nunes and Moutinho are just as pleasant in person. I learn that I'm one of at least a couple hundred students, most of them mainland Chinese and one of whom I met on the bus to campus when he was short a couple patacas for bus fare and all I had was a coin more than twice the cost of mine (fares must be paid in exact change; a pain in the ass, which is why I got a Macau Pass ASAP). I'm ashamed to say that I can't recall his name right now, but he was pretty friendly, and his Portuguese was pretty good.
    Waiting in line to get my student ID and meal tickets (free food is a real boon, but let's hope canteen food here is better than it was during my last foray into the world of overseas language programs four years ago), I can't put my finger on how well most of these kids know Portuguese, because they're all understandably speaking Mandarin to one another and often resort to English when talking to the coordinators. The lists in the hallway indicate that the advanced class is only fourteen people, while the intermediate, basic, and introductory classes all have over twice that number of students. I'm enrolled in the basic course with Professor Jorge Cavalheiro, whose beard, glasses, and demeanor- I pass him on his bike an hour later- is hard evidence of there being a universal archetype of college professors. I talk to him briefly about possibly changing classes, since I'm unsure whether I'm better suited to the intermediate level, and he says we'll sort it out tomorrow, once he gets a feel for the overall proficiency level of the class.
    With logistics more or less taken care of- less, really, since there's a heretofore unsolved problem with the campus wifi that's starting to nag at me- I go to the campus grocery store for snacks, Pocari Sweat, and a couple beers, then visit the library. It's gigantic and difficult to navigate because half of the staircases and corridors are taped off for remodeling. The Macau Corner, which I've been looking forward to investigating, is at a brief glance a series of locked cabinets full of archival material and not the casual collection of Macau-oriented books I was hoping for. I'll have to go back and check it out more thoroughly, especially once I have the library computer info written down: if this wifi problem persists, I'll have to post to my website from there. Good thing I brought a thumb drive.
    At this point I'm tempted to leave campus and go walk around Taipa or the Macau Peninsula, but long hours of travel and the heat conspire to keep me close to the dorms. I can't help but notice that every single water fountain I've come across is out of service for "hygiene reasons", which doesn't bode well. I've been drinking water from the attached hot tap, which I hope circumvents the mysterious hygiene problem. The vending machine downstairs doesn't just refuse to take bills, but does its best to savagely mangle them. Signs tell me that the AC shouldn't be left on when you're not around (fair enough, except that the whole dorm is a sauna) and that the ideal temperature is 25 degrees Celsius (untrue when you've been out in 31-degree sun and humidity all day). I'm trying to avoid letting little things like these get the best of me, but I've got three weeks to go.
    Next up: first day of class, canteen food, and who knows what else. Até logo, amigos.

7.14.15

    Canteen food is, of course, exactly what you'd expect. I skipped breakfast yesterday, but intended to get some this morning- until I saw the line. I think every one of the almost 300 students in the Portuguese program was there, and then some. The line is so long because there's a half-hour window open between the opening of the canteen and when classes begin, which is some bad timing. I turned around and went to Pacific Coffee, since a cup of joe sounded mighty good. It was closed, which was as baffling as it was frustrating. I guess it's because it's summer, but that excuse is getting old. Anyway, the professors are aware of the situation, and being a few minutes seems doable.
    I met my roommate, Darren. He's 26, from Hong Kong, and quite affable. His English isn't great, but then again neither is my Mandarin, which is the language in which he usually addresses me. I'm not sure how, but he seems to know a number of the young ladies in our hall, all of whom are very nice, and today he introduced me to another Hong Konger, Kevin. (Or maybe Kelvin. I need to check.) Kevin's 22 and quite serious about HK maintaining its identity in the face of growing Mainland efforts to rub it out. He participated in the Umbrella Revolution last year. He's an interesting dude.
    I was in Professor Cavalheiro's class for about five minutes before he sent me upstairs to the intermediate class. I was in there for even less time, and finally wound up back downstairs in the advanced class with Professor Leonor Seabra. The class material is decent, from what I've seen, and Professor Seabra doesn't waste any time speaking anything but Portuguese. Alas, she does so in a rather quiet voice, which makes her hard to follow. My classmates- as of today there are sixteen of them, I believe- are mostly women and all Chinese; well, I say that, but I think some may be from Hong Kong, and there's at least one Macanese woman. (N.B. I'm using "Macanese" in this instance to mean "someone from Macau", and not in the more strict sense of "someone of mixed Luso-Asian descent native to Macau".) Their Portuguese seems pretty good, and their accents lead me to believe that their teachers back home learned Continental Portuguese rather than the Brazilian variety. The unmistakeable unease of being in a formal language class hangs over the room, and isn't improved by conversation not being the main focus. It's a big change for me, since my year of classes at the Brazilian Arts Foundation has been primarily conversation-based, and everyone there is usually keen to talk. Now talking is something you're called upon to do, and it's usually reading aloud rather than conversing. On the plus side, I'll be doing a lot of writing in Portuguese, which I've never done before. I just hope I get corrections back.
    After class I eat lunch- decent, if greasy, but goddamn the soup tastes like dishwater- and relax a bit in the dorm before getting on the bus to Macau proper. Since the new UM campus is actually on an island belonging to the Mainland, there's one way in and out, and only a few bus routes. Most of them drop you off at Praça Ferreira Amaral, a stone's through from Casino Lisboa and a stop along the routes of a zillion other buses. I wander around a bit, take some photos, do some homework over a Sagres at Cafe Ou Mun, and visit the Livraria Portuguesa, where I pick up a book of prose poems called Macau: O Livros dos Nomes by Carlos Morais José. I stop at the Cathedral Cafe on the way back to the bus stop, this time for a Super Bock, and then it's back to campus so I can make the Abertura do Curso de Verão, or Opening Ceremony of the Summer Course, at 6:00.
    I wasn't expecting much, and in a way I got exactly that: there are no seats, which means the handful of speeches we get to hear are that much harder to bear. Luckily the speeches are short and not terrible: Professores Nunes and Moutinho say a bit, then a pretty jovial adminstration figure, then another one of those, and finally the Consul-Geral de Portugal em Macau e Hong Kong, who I recognized when I entered the room, having seen his photo in Portuguese-language Macau media before. I brought a blazer and tie with me to Macau, but had no idea this event would be, well, an event, so I end up standing around only slightly better dressed than a lot of my classmates but nowhere as nice as some (all of them ladies) or the teaching staff. Nobody cares but me.
    Delicious Macanese food is served, and the Chinese penchant for ignoring the fuck out a proper queue manifests immediately. I chat with Professor Cavalheiro a bit, complimenting him on his beard (it's a great beard) and remarking that it reminds me of Camilo Pessanha's. We talk about Pessanha a bit, and when I ask if the Professor knows where Pessanha is buried, he says he does, and will be glad to show me. I'm pretty stoked about that outing.
    As I'm standing around shoving minchi into my craw I'm approached by a young Portuguese woman I made for a journalist early on in the ceremony. I was right: she works for the Jornal Tribuna de Macau, which I believe is Macau's oldest surviving Portuguese paper. I soon find myself talking on the record about why I'm here, why I like Macau and the Portuguese language, and so on- all of this in Portuguese, mind you, because why wouldn't it be? The print edition of the JTM hit newsstands at 3:00 this afternoon, so I'm going back into town later to find a copy and see if I show up in the article about the summer program.
    When I'm approached by some of my classmates later, who seem less shy outside of the sala de aulas, I also try to stick to Portuguese in the hope of getting them to do the same, which they generally do. It's hard to fault them, since I know how hard it is to try and use a language that isn't your own when you're in a new place, surrounded by strangers. We've got the rest of July for them to open up, and I hope they do, because speaking Portuguese is pretty great.

 P.S. The Jornal Tribuna article is already online! I come off pretty well, though Senhora Almeida made my Portuguese sound better than it was.