Dear Fellow Rotarians,

1. We had an extremely good fellowship and informative joint meeting with our Rotaract Clubs 2 weeks ago where we had a total of nearly 60 persons attending including Rotaractors and visiting Rotarians from the District Conference Organizing Committee. I and Aris nearly had to share one meal because Venetian had run out of our ordered food. Luckily they had one vegetarian meal standby. We celebrated the November birthday boys – Fred was among them but Alfredo was not there. The total of the $3,000 box collection went to our Guangxi Project with the Rotaractors.

2. Last Thursday, we invited Rev. Thomas Dunseth to speak to us on the works for the deaf and mute. I learnt a lot and have a clearer picture now. I always thought that sign language was just one universal sign language. I did not know that there are so many different sign languages for the British, American, German, Chinese …..etc., even the Chinese sign language is different for Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Macau and the Mainlanders. When I saw fewer deaf & mute students in special schools, I thought that the born deaf rate had been lowered not knowing that they have been put in the mainstream schools. How ignorant I was!!!!!!

3. If you want to learn more, come to our next meeting this Thursday, 1st December, 8 at 8:30 pm at the Venetian. PP Gary Ngai visited Goa recently and he will share with us his impression of Goa, in comparison with Macau.

4. It is confirmed that our Christmas Party with the mentally handicapped and their families will be held on 7th December, Wednesday, 7:00 pm at the Venetian. Please note that the party will start a little earlier because of the kids. This will be our 12th Christmas with the kids and thanks to Venetian, we have their continual support, and thanks to Pres. Keith who has been trying to put fertilizer?? on his beard every day to make them grow faster and stronger, to be our Santa Claus and Rtn. Elvo is to be the MC for the night. Please bring your families and friends and let me know the no. of attendance in due course.

5. We will be visiting Guangxi again with our Rotaractos on 26th ~ 29th December. We will visit 3 primary schools, and 1 middle school and visit villagers this year. Together with our Rotaractors, we will give students clothing and shoes, biscuits and sweets, and eggs for their lunch and we will have lunch with students at the schools. We will also bring bottles of cooking oil when visiting the villagers. We are planning to visit 50 families. The Rotaractors will go there by coach and there are 5 seats reserved for Rotarians. Choi and Fatima will take the coach and Kazu will go by air since he has back pain and cannot take a 12-hour ride in a coach. Those who would like to join, please let me know ASAP. I do hope Kevin can join again this year so that we can bring our mobile dental unit with us to give dental care and treatment to the students and villagers. Please find attached the picture of the footbridge we did earlier for the students there. The bridge bears our name, the Rotary Club of Macau in Chinese.

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6. Though this mail is a bit long, I hope you find it informative and read it till the end. I was encouraged by Maeder when I received his mail saying, ” I do enjoy always your info”. I am glad that Maeder will be coming to our meeting on 5th January 2012 and he is looking forward to being part of us after the Chinese New Year of 2015. Hurrah!! Only 3 ~ 4 years to go!!!

I look forward to seeing you all this Thursday.

Yours in Rotary,
Stella