The Princess and The Pee

Whew! I am so glad today is over. It started with a 7:30 a.m. departure for the hospital. I wish I had been able to take pictures. It was like stepping back in time to a 1960’s hospital. All the nurses were wearing cute little pink dresses with cute little pink hats. The order of my tests went something like this: First room I was weighed and measured. Second room I received a chest xray. Third was the ECG. Fourth room I had my blood drawn (from my hand, of course, because my veins are retarded) and I was handed a flimsy plastic cup about half the size of a shot glass. Now I would like everyone to pause and close your eyes and imagine that you are me. Imagine that you’ve been told to pee into this tiny fragile cup and leave it on a tray in the hallway. Now imagine that you’re in China and the only bathrooms are squat pots and you’ve been avoiding them the whole two weeks you’ve been here and therefore have no practice peeing in a squat position let alone aiming for a tiny tiny flimsy flimsy plastic friggin’ cup! Yes, I was mortified. I tried. I squatted. My bladder refused to release its contents in that unnatural position. I took a break and went back in to no avail. I decided to drink some more water and finish the other tests. So, back up stairs for the liver sonogram, the vision test, and the ear, nose, & throat test. And back downstairs for another ‘go’. Still no luck. I tried to explain to our Chinese liason that I was having difficulty using the squatty potty. When she finally understood what I was saying she explained it to the Chinese man with her. He then proceeded in broken English to tell me that it was just my nerves and that if I relaxed I could pee just fine. Yes, I was mortified again. By now everyone was on the bus waiting for me, though they didn’t know it. I drank another bottle of water and marched back into the bathroom for my now fourth attempt. And I am proud to say that even with a busload of people waiting for me I was finally able to deposit a small amount into that stupid cup. What a nightmare!

We came back to the hotel for lunch but then had to load the buses again for the PSB, or Public Security Bureau, for our police interviews. It wasn’t anything really. A woman asked me if I had been a teacher before and how long I was at my previous job. The whole ‘interview’ took about two minutes. But because this is China and waiting is like an Olympic sport here, we spent about 3 ½ hours there. Then back to the hotel to eat some more.

At dinner James Jones, the head coordinator, asked Gwen, Audrey, and I if we’d be interested in doing a song for some event for teacher’s day. We met up in the lobby with the ten or so other people who volunteered and found out from Judy Jong, the head of the education bureau, that it’s actually for Children’s Day (I think) and we’ll be singing a Chinese song at the stadium for about 10,000 or 20,000 people and it will be televised! Yikes! I’m excited. It should be pretty fun. We’ll probably get to wear crazy costumes and do a dance too.

Tomorrow is a free day (finally!) and a bunch of us are going shopping. Sunday we have our contract signing ceremony and we move into our apartments. Oh! I’ll be at the Li yuan Foreign Language School and I’ll be teaching with an Englishwoman named Rosemary. The school sounds really nice. It’s pretty exclusive. Apparently there’s a waiting list to get in. That’s all I really know about it so far.

Night everyone!

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