The tally begins now.

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We received our placements yesterday. I’m living in Futian, the newest and cleanest downtown section of Shenzhen, at a middle school with my friend Ian. We each have a room in the teacher’s dormitory. Although I’m disappointed that Kiki and I aren’t living together in an apartment, the school is supposed to be one of the best in Shenzhen and the rooms are supposed to be pretty nice. A good number of my friends are within walking distance, and another few, including Kiki and Kofi, are within 10-20 minutes. I’m excited to meet my contact teacher!

The tally begins now. China: 1, Megan: 0.

Yesterday we had health examinations and police interviews for our residence/work permits. The Shenzhen hospital was modern and clean for the most part, and James had us get into groups to expedite the process. Once we got into the hallway with rooms for each part of the exam (abdominal ultrasound, EKG, height and weight, nose ear and throat, chest x-ray, piss test, and blood work), he said, “Nevermind, China wins again. Forget the groups and just get into lines at each door.” The result was 125 Americans queuing up for various tests while bewildered Chinese people tried to cut us and were told to come back later. An hour later, it was my turn to get blood drawn. We hadn’t been allowed to eat since 8 pm the night before and I hadn’t had anything to drink because clean water is so hard to find in this damn country. (I may be entering the hostile stage…) After 22 years I finally found out that my blood type is A, which is more information than I ever got from blood work in the States. Five minutes later, while I was eating bread I had procured beforehand so I could get some sugar into my system as soon as possible, the world began to spin and I pushed my friend Ian out of the way so I could sit on the floor in the hospital hallway. My pressure dropped and my vision became fuzzy. I woke once, looked up at a crowd of people looking at me, said, “Oh, hey,” and then fell back again into a frustrating haze of semi-consciousness. I could hear a lot of yelling and when everything came back into focus I saw a large yellow figure standing over me, who turned out to be my friend Stephen. He and Ian helped gather my things while a Chinese nurse escorted me to a room with a bed where the Chinese people were having their blood drawn. They forced me to drink three hot glasses of what I imagine IV fluid tastes like—salty/bitter, thick, and disgusting. A woman from the Education Bureau brought me regular water and another bread thing, but she took the water away quickly when she realized it was cold, and returned with hot water. Better for your health, you know.

Once I had come to a little, she helped me cut all the lines and whisked me through the rest of the exams. The piss test was really difficult because I was still kind of dizzy, there was no soap in the bathroom, and the pee cup didn’t have a top. As I teetered down the hospital hallway with my open pee cup and my bunches of used tissues, I prayed I would make it to whatever pee receptacle they had before I had to sneeze again. I imagined pee and snot going everywhere, but I was most afraid of having to pee into the tiny cup all over again. I had a really bad cold on top of everything, which has been made worse by the dust and mold of our new hotel in Shenzhen. Apparently I sneezed while I was seizing on the hospital floor. I’m sorry for the graphic detail, but looking back it’s pretty amusing and I want to convey the ludicrous nature of the situation. Just so you know, I’m feeling a lot better now.

The police interview was mostly harmless. My cop was young and kinda cute, and flirting with him made the interview go twice as fast as my friends who got the female cop. The whole process took about four hours though, because one of the returners had an expired visa. Looks like he might be on his way back to Hong Kong…

We finally have a day off today. After two weeks of training, interviews, and exams, sleeping in until 10 was glorious. Right now, there’s thunder and lighting outside and Kiki and I are jamming out to corny French music. I could stay in bed all day and watch the torrential rain. Unfortunately, we’re going to get cell phones this afternoon, which I am pretty excited about. I hope it stops raining before then. I’ll post again once I move into my apartment.

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