Since we last wrote, we have moved into our apartment, had most of our furniture delivered and installed and got the cable tv hooked up. We must have 60 channels - about 10 are in english and naturally the cable company packages it so that there is one english speaking channel in each package, so that to get all the english channels you have to subscribe to the whole thing! Even so, the monthly rate is about $A60, which is pretty good in comparison to Foxtel. Last night was the first night we had it and we watched a bit of the Australian Open - exactly the same match was being shown on 2 sport channels, with different chinese commentary - I can only presume one was cantonese and the other mandarin - but my chinese is not advanced enough to know the difference.

Speaking of chinese - the kids are going pretty well in mandarin at school. Even though the main chinese language of Macau is Cantonese, this is not the national language of china and therefore the school teachs mandarin in accordance with the local education dept rules. Claire is settling into her double mandarin each day and is finding she is becoming a little more familiar
with it each day. Stephen seems to really enjoy it. He often has to write an A4 page of chinese symbols for homework and each time has received an A for it. He was very thrilled with this. He even had chinese dictation on Monday and received 86%. It boggles my mind to think of chinese dictation really! He is
becoming our resident expert in mandarin along with Claire's CD ROM! Matthew's class is performing 2 songs for chinese new year and he has been busy learning those. Each of the children have a chinese name and Stephen is called by his chinese name in mandarin lessons by the teacher.