Edge

So my good friend, Edge came to vist right at the end of the semester. Yay!

I really had a lot of fun while he was here. I showed him all of my favorite places in Chengde and Beijing, and I even took him to campus to meet my students. He got the real Chinese experience because he was able to capitalize on my four months' experience.

I took him to Donkey restaraunt, Hot Pot, Korean BBQ, New Red Lantern, and Summer Mountain resort here in Chengde. He also got a taste of the BCD and KTV. He met Winter, Arwen, Vince, Ted, and Michael, along with all of my students. Oh, and Mr. Lei and his son. Edge is an incredibly social person (I wish I could be as social as he is), and he had no trouble getting along with everyone he met.

In Beijing, he got to see the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, The Great Wall, an Acrobatics show, and some other cool stuff. We also got to hang out with Paul, Sarah, and Amit, whom I hadn't seen in a really long time. And we even made a day trip to Tianjin, where we saw a Chinese history museum and went roller blading.

All in all, I'm really glad he came. It's nice to have such a good friend come and visit so you can show them all that you've been experiencing. If you really want his true experience, I know he made a video of his adventures, and it's probably rather entertaining, so you should ask him for it.

Christmas

Another late post.

Christmas wasn't that bad this year, despite it being the first time I have ever missed being at home.

On Christmas Eve, five of us went to the Korean BBQ to get good food and french toast like we said we would. It was AWESOME as usual. I naturally wasn't drinking cuz I was on antibiotics and didn't want to screw anything up with the intestinal inflammation finally dying down. But we all had a good time. And I was able to talk to the 'rents and everyone else who was home on Skype, so it didn't seem like I was that far away.

Christmas Day I quick packed up all of the stuff for making the roast (which Rosie's husband, Ming helped me buy), grabbed the oven and headed off to Shijuan and Megan's apartment to start the cooking. Me, Megan, and two of Megan's students spent all day cooking, and I must say we turned out one heck of a Christmas dinner. We had the roast, mashed potatoes, honeyed carrots, green beans and mushrooms, fried pumpkin, rolls, and a few other miscellaneous items that everyone enjoyed immensely. Oh, and a HECK of a lot of beer. There wound up being ten of us at dinner, but only 9 ate since one had eaten earlier. After dinner, we all sat around drinking beer (minus me, antibiotics) until the students had to leave at 10 for curfew.

After the students left, there were five of us that participated in a gift exchange. It was basically a white elephant gift thing that you couldn't spend more than 20 qui on. I bought this hideous pillow with a giant face on it that was really soft. Hideous, but functional. Chris loved it immensely. I wound up getting this awesome pair of slippers with a giant pink pig on it. Yay pink!

Of course, getting home was a problem. The busses stop running to Shijuan at 7 pm, and we didn't leave until 1 am. Bad idea. There weren't even any taxis waiting outside the school gates. We (Me, Zach, and Matt) had to walk 3 miles in the freezing, biting cold carrying a guitar and an oven to even find us a taxi to take us the rest of the way back into town.

The next morning I was able to chat with the family again on Skype and watch them all open gifts, including the ones that I sent home for everyone.

All in all, it was a pretty memorable Christmas.

Chinese Hospitals really aren't that scary

This was supposed to be posted at the end of December, sorry about that.

Chinese hospitals really aren't as scary as they sound. But let me start from the beginning.

I woke up Sunday morning (the Sunday before Christmas) with a horrible stomach ache. I was pretty nautious and my stomach was sore. It was painful just sitting there. Because I have an overactive imagination, I started thinking it was probably appendicitis. So I called my trusty family doctor...i.e...my sister Erin. I told her why I was calling and she did some quick diagnostics over the phone. Basically when I jumped up and down it made the pain worse, and when I pushed on my stomach and let go really fast, it really hurt. So even though the pain was on the wrong side for appendicitis, I decided it was probably a good idea to go to the hospital. Yikes! Chinese hospitals! *bites fingernails* Nobody hears anything good about Chinese hospitals! Or was it Chinese prisons?

The first person I called was Zach, because I figured he would want to be in on this and it would be nice to have there with me. Of course, it's 8 am at this time, and Zach had been out most of the night before. I'm pretty sure his thought process when he picked up the phone for my call was "what the F*** are you calling me at this hour for?" Of course, once I told him what was going on and what I was planning, he was in my apartment in less than five minutes. Yay Zach!

Then I called up my good friend, Mr. Lei. I figured he would be the best person to go with me to the hospital since a) he is the most well-connected person I've ever met and b) he's experienced with medical terminology having studied in Australia for 7 years and writing a book about English-Chinese medical terms. Mr. Lei was naturally worried when I told him what I though the problem was and he told me he was going to make a few phone calls because it was Sunday. A few minutes later, Mr. Lei calls me and tells me that he has called the VP of the hospital, and is on his way to pick me up. He then shows up in a taxi because he doesn't want me to walk the two blocks to the Affiliated Hospital of CDMC.

So we get to the hospital, and despite the fact that there is a bunch of construction going on (and not behind closed curtains, I might add), the hospital is actually quite clean. It looks pretty much like a hospital in the states would except with a bunch of Chinese people running around and no carpet. Oh, and no waiting rooms, and everything is called the something something ward.

For the next few hours, I proceeded to be poked and prodded by at least four different doctors. And there is no privacy, so no matter where I was, people were doing double takes past whatever room I was in and then would walk very slowly so they could point and stare. I had an ultrasound done, to which I pointed out to my sister that if anything showed up on an ultrasound, it would be another baby Jesus. I had to take a piss test (just to be sure there was no baby Jesus), had some blood samples run which showed high on the WBC and a few other things, and ran a CT scan, just to be sure. They then called in the head of surgury to come look at my CT scans on his day off. We also took the staff elevator, so we didn't have to take the crowded public elevator.

All in all, they ruled it "intestinal inflammation," and sent me home with a round of antibiotics. The total cost was just over 500 CNY, which translates to about 80 USD. And that includes the antibiotics and maximum strength painkillers. Oh, and Mr. Lei got my bloodwork done for free because he knew the nurse working and the blook counter.

So my ruling on Chinese hospitals is this: they aren't scary if you go to the good ones, and you have Mr. Lei to accompany you. And hey, you might just get the royal treatment.