Long Time No Blog

Why has it been almost the entire month of February since I last wrote? Well, there is really just one reason: and that is that I have been sick. Generally my blog is the place where I get to brag about how much fun I have been having, how much I am learning and experiencing everyday, and how phenomenal and thought-provoking China can be. Unfortunately, when you are sick, life is slightly less exciting. I spent a week lying around, watching movies and sleeping 18 hours a day, annoyed by my own weakness and sickness, but feeling unable to do anything about it. After a week of gastro-intestinal distress, I finally faced the fact that I would have to make a scary trip to the scary China hospital. I don't know how many details of that trip my more squeamish readers can handle, but I will just say that America has a pill based medicine culture, and China has a needle based medicine culture. Another important cultural difference is that Americans value privacy, wanting to see their own doctor in their own private room, without five or ten other sick strangers standing over them. China is not this way. In China, there are too many people to care about privacy. All sorts of doctors were touching my tummy and asking me about my poop (which I can now discuss in Chinese!) in the middle of crowded rooms.
But I survived! I am feeling much better now, and I promise that my next blog will not be about Chinese Hospitals. In other news, I have started class at the Kunming College of Eastern Languages and Culture. My class is every morning from 8:30-10:10 and has five students. Three of the students are Japanese men in their sixties and seventies. There is one women who is kind of from Canada, but originally from Egypt, who is in her thirties, I think. Then there is me. It is a very interesting educational environment. My job is also going well, I am not sure if I have bragged about my bilingual business cards yet, but they are sweet, and make me feel like a big kid. My daily duties generally range from running errands to making photo copies and organizing readings that will go into collections for semester and summer programs. Soon, I will also start screening homestay families, which means going to the homes of Chinese families, having dinner with them, asking questions about the family, and answering the questions that they have about Dragons and hosting foreign students. I am excited to start meeting families. I am sure it will be really good for my Chinese. Although, the Kunming accent is really hard for me. I am not used to it, and I have made silly mistakes like not understanding numbers and giving a shopkeeper 3 yuan when he just told me I owe 12. On top of the accent, Kunming also has its own language which involves saying "ga" a lot. That is about all I understand right now.
After not really being able to eat for a week, I am pretty excited to start delving deeper into the amazing world of Kunming food. So much good food. Tonight I ate Xinjiang (Muslim influenced region in Northwestern China) noodles for the first time and they were amazing. Some other local specialties are deep fried red beans, stir fried broccoli and goat cheese, and spicy mashed potatoes. There are a lot of ethnic groups in Yunnan Province, and this means lots of interesting food that is very different from the rest of China. And, since it is warm and sunny all the time, the tropical fruits and fruit juices and the spicy cold noodles dishes are amazing and refreshing. I can't wait to feed my brother, who is coming to China in less than 3 weeks!

My New Life

It has been a while. Since I last wrote, my parents and I went on a week long trek through the Yunnan wilderness, during which time we faced such challenges as hungry goats, less than sanitary bathrooms, and unidentifiable foods. However, we also enjoyed phenomenal views, spent time in minority village homestays, and met other interesting travelers. About a week ago I put my parents on a plane (very early in the morning) and sent them home. It was great to have them here, and it was kind of a cool role reversal where I got to be the parent and my parents got to be the kids for a bit. I got them places, ordered them food, and held their hands when we crossed the scary China streets.
As soon as they left, I moved into my new apartment, which I am sharing with another Dragons semester instructor. It is gorgeous. It is probably the nicest apartment that I will ever live in. It is in a complex with a pool (although I just tried to swim in it and I was forced to buy a ticket, and then the pool was frickin' freezing...which considering my tolerance for cold, means it was take your breathe away, hypothermic shock cold). This past week I have spent settling in, buying a bike, signing up for classes, renewing my Visa, and running errands for the Dragons Instructors, since they have all been busy preparing for the new semester program, which starts today. I also played in a frisbee tournament this past weekend, the first annual Kunming hat tournament, which just happened to be perfectly planned for the first weekend that I arrived in Kunming. It was really fun, a great opportunity to meet interesting people in the community. The weather was absolutely beautiful, not to mention my team won the entire tournament (there were four teams).
So things are good. I am slowly learning my way around and trying hard to slowly acclimate to the local accent.
The weirdest thing that has happened to me in Kunming was that I had to go have a foreigner medical exam in order to renew my Visa for another 6 months. The exam was like nothing I have experienced. Chinese Hospitals have a reputation (among foreigners) for being terrible places, and up until this point I have been lucky enough to avoid them. However, there was no way around this one. Basically, the exam involves a variety of seemingly random tests that involve inflicting emotional and physical pain, while at the same time demoralizing the patient in bizarre ways. It was all very Chinese.
The first test that I had to submit to was an EKG. I am not even exactly sure what that is supposed to test, but I do know that it involved putting many circular suctions cups on my chest and clamps on my wrists and ankles while the woman administering the test told me in Chinese to relax. The second test was an ultra-sound. In my experience ultra-sounds are for pregnant women, but in the context of the Chinese foreigner medical examination, they are given to men and women of all ages, in order to look at your insides. This test may have inflicted the most emotional distress, because the ultra-sound gook was cold and slimy, and because I am ticklish, and because she kept telling me to stick out my tummy. It was all very weird. Then I went into the X-ray room, where I stood in the middle of this big machine and put my feet where the foot marks were, and then the man closed the door and the machine did god knows what, and I didn't ask any questions, because I did not want to know. Test 4 was ordinary: height, weight, and blood pressure. Test 5 I am pretty sure was to check if I was colorblind (there were green numbers in the middle of a red background), but for me it was more a test of my ability to recall how to say Chinese numbers under bizarre circumstances. I also got to hold a wooden spoon over my eyes one at a time and do the whole "the E is facing this way" eye test. All of these tests were on the first floor. Little did I know what was waiting for me upstairs.
Okay, I kind of knew because it was written on my examination sheet in English and Chinese, but I definitely was not prepared for it. At the first window a bored looking women silently thrust an small empty plastic cup at me and pointed to the sign for the bathroom. The Chinese government wants my pee. Okay. No problem. They even supplied me with the choice between western and squat toilets.
The last test involved a person taking a lot of my blood. Four vials to be exact. I do not know why they needed four vials, or why they needed to have a glass window between me and the blood taker, with only a small hole through which I had to put my arm so they could prick it with a needle and suck out all they needed. They must have tested me for every disease known to mankind. Unfortunately, they underestimated my blood flow, because when they told me I could remove the pressure that I was holding onto the spot where I had just been sucked dry, my blood continued to flow. Oops. Don't worry though, I got a band aid, and everything was all better. What I really could have used at that point was a sticker, but they were no where to be found.
Three days and 326 RMB (about $50) later, I have my very own Chinese Health I.D. and I can now apply for a Visa extension which will allow me to stay in China for another 6 months.