Yesterday I had to go to the International Medical Clinic to get a health physical for my residence permit since the one I had in the states was insufficient. I'm not a fan of doctors and when I was told I was going to need to go in, my head started swimming with all of the potentially horrible procedures they might think to put the little laomei through or the spectacle I might become for a band of Chinese doctors. Ugh.

Turns out I had little to fear, as is usually the case in these sorts of situations. Apparently this is a clinic set up specifically for such visa and residence permit applications and the efficiency and cost per dollar value was actually quite incredible. We were to fill out forms and then we were given a list of rooms we were to visit for the various examinations, four in total. For 510rmb (approx. US$64), I was given a chest x-ray, blood work, an EKG, eye exam and an internal organ ultrasound. Now granted, I didn't see where the needle they used for the blood test came from so I'm a little worried about that, but it did go in a sharps bin when they were done so I'm hopeful I was the first and last to use that needle. gulp!

The EKG was a little scary...they had this examining table that looked like something which might have come from a 1950's hospital with wires along the side that made it look a little like something from a horror film. I felt even more like Frankenstein's monster when the woman had me lie on the table and connected these clamp things to my wrists and ankles. I didn't know this was an EKG machine at the time so I was even more worried when she stuck these little sensors (which look like wood beads stuck to wires) to my chest. I was just waiting for the electroshock therapy and the lobotomy.

So Hans, another American friend of mine over here, suggested something for keeping people posted on what's going on over here. Write for 15 minutes each day, publish, then go to bed. So here goes, 12:05am Thursday morning and the things I currently find remarkable...

China is remarkable. I live in a city of 7 million, the streets are always bustling, I went for a walk this evening with friends and was pleased to see how many people were also walking, playing cards, visiting with neighbors, etc. all out of doors enjoying the pleasant evening air. 7 million. And the remarkable thing is that there are COUNTLESS other cities, suburbs, towns, villages, etc. that have at least a million people. egads! I just can't wrap my head around it!

Another remarkable thing is the taste of dog meat. I visited a private English school that's looking for foreigners to come help them teach and the owner took us out to dinner afterwards. She asked what I like to eat and I said I hadn't been in the country long enough to know my way around dumplings and tofu so she suggested half-jokingly that she should like to introduce me to dog. I called her bluff and found myself in a little hole in the wall restaurant specializing in the preparation of dog (there are many, called gou rou da fan or other variations using the words gou rou) where before sitting down, was led to view a painting of some very happy looking golden retrievers. For shame! At least I didn't have to look at that while we were eating. Don't worry, they breed dogs specifically for consumption, usually the small pekingese looking ones so we weren't eating someone's pet thank heavens. We only had an appetizer of dog, the rest was of normal meat faire, but the remarkable thing about dog meat is that as far as a food product goes, it's not really that remarkable...it tastes like dark meat chicken and is exceptionally gristley (think the neck, liver, heart, etc. that comes in the bag stuffed up the turkey's butt during Thanksgiving that you boil and feed to your cat.) Thanks, I'll stick to my barn bred animals.

Going further along the remarkable theme, one must touch on the patience and energy of my Chinese coworkers. They're young, good looking, hard working, eager to help and they have genuine hearts of gold. I got the impression through a lot of my pre-departure reading that the Chinese are bureaucratic, stuffy paper pushers that are tough to work with from a foreign perspective. Nay nay, says I. Nay. Nay. On the contrary, they are casual, laidback, down to earth, strong, persistent and extremely warm and likeable. I feel that these remarkable qualities could also be extended to my other non-Chinese coworkers. People from all sorts of backgrounds and hardships coming together to teach and be part of something that they feel is going to help others. It's inspiring to work with these people and be a part of all this and I am excited for the growing friendship and companionship.

Being an unmistakeable foreigner, I am thus granted a celebrity status of sorts. Be that as it may, I'm really enjoying the remarkable hospitality and warmth of the Chinese population in general. Though the city is relatively dusty and dirty, half of the city seems to be under perpetual construction and there are strange and unpleasant smells coming from the sewer gratings, I can't help but feel a strong pull to strike up conversations with people, smile at shopkeepers, even do an occasional what's up nod to the taxi drivers who slow down and rubber neck as they drive by. And really, being that Shenyang is such a large city, the denizens have become fairly accustomed to seeing people who look like me walking around so it's really just an eye contact and move along. The remarkable thing is that of all the cities in China, I am lucky enough to spend a year with the friendliest people you could ever want to meet.

Finally, the last thing that's remarkable (because my 15 minutes was up about 20 minutes ago) is the lesson I learned yesterday about the connection between my toilet and the washing machine. My washing machine is small enough to move around the bathroom, but just large enough to make shutting the bathroom door a bit of a maneuvering trick. In all my great wisdom, I decided it would be most convenient and space efficient to move my washing machine to the other side of the room, out of path of said door. You see the washing machine draws water from the same line as the toilet and is therefore connected via a hose, that as you might have guessed, transports water. Thinking I had closed the water valve on my toilet, I proceeded to disconnect the adjoined hoses, only to decide rather immediately that this was not such a good idea as water began rushing out of the hose and all over my bathroom floor. Despite my best efforts to reattach the hoses through the rushing water, I finally resigned to let the water rush into the toilet while I went to find some help. I hoped that my slightly soaked t-shirt would do in lieu of my limited Chinese plumbing vocabulary. Thankfully the young, handsome and adorable :-) building maintenance man who doesn't speak any English was available and came to my rescue. He came back today to help me figure out how to use my washing machine. Ok, so the story is not all that remarkable but it is at least slightly entertaining and promises of future interesting stories ;-).

And that's my "15 minutes." Next time: the first installment of Chinglish, that crazy and often hilarious Chinese mutilation of the English language. Cheers!

And so my adventures in China begin...

I got to Shenyang yesterday (sunday) morning and was dropped off at my apartment at around 10:30. My contact suggested I rest for awhile and made arrangements to meet with me again on Tuesday to get my residence permit and other documents. And then she left...

uhh...help?!

My guess is she thinks I know more Chinese than I actually do. :-( In any case, survival instincts kicked in as I was exceptionally thirsty but had been told not to drink the tap water. I went downstairs to the front desk to see about water, couldn’t understand what they were saying but they understood me enough to lead me to get a bottle of water at their little store. No idea how much I paid for it, was slightly flustered. Then I asked about a phone card and paid for that and went back upstairs. Problem is, I had no idea how to use it. So I futzed around with it for awhile and then went back downstairs to get some help. The xiaojie at the desk gave me a visual but I still didn’t understand a word she said. As I was going back upstairs, I met a couple of other students here, one a Japanese student named Sayuri. She introduced me to a couple of her other friends who spoke Japanese and they helped me figure out how to use the phone. phew, the Japanese skills saved me on that one.

Luckily I had the phone number for Darren, a friend of mine who's also teaching here so I gave him a call and he came over and walked me around the city for awhile just to get a sense of the place. That helped. A little. I was still really overwhelmed by it all though, thinking to myself often, just what the heck have I done and gotten myself into? It was scary suddenly feeling very alone and not knowing what to do. I'm glad Darren was here or I would have seriously had a major panic attack.

Darren and Wang Yang (Darren's girlfriend) and I went to dinner later and had a very tasty meal of pidandoufu (soft tofu with green onions and thousand year eggs (preserved eggs, salty, but yummy), a ground pork dish poured over mashed potatoes and jiaozi (potsticker dumplings).

I crashed around 10ish and was still feeling really overwhelmed but I slept like a rock and made myself promise to be more adventurous in the morning. I even had myself talked into going and finding breakfast by myself.

Well breakfast on my own didn't happen because Darren and Wang Yang wanted to introduce me to youtiao...it's this fried bread that you dip in sweet soy milk. A popular breakfast treat and Wang Yang taught me how to order for myself so it was a good learning experience.

We walked around for awhile and stopped by and met some of the other teachers I'll be working with and then did a little shopping for my apartment. I'm feeling better about buying things on my own. It's amazing how much more comfortable I've become with basic Chinese just in the last 24 hours.

Another teacher from MN arrived this afternoon and he and I decided to walk to Beiling Park. A little history: Shenyang is the former capitol of Manchuria. A lot of the relics/traditional buildings were destroyed by the Japanese during WWII but Beiling (North Tomb) is a holdover.
I'll add photos later because the uploader seems to not be working at the moment.

I'm really spoiled as far as living arrangements go. It's actually almost embarrassing how well taken care of I am as a foreigner. I have so much to learn about this country and this culture. What's really quite amazing is the range of emotions I've felt in the last 24 hours. From frightened, overwhelmed, scared, intimidated, lost, exhausted, perplexed to excited, exuberant, content, peaceful, thoughtful, humbled, pensive...and yet it's weird, it's as if I'm watching it all from a distance because I'm staying pretty even keeled through all of this.

What's most interesting is that even though it's all so new, it nevertheless feels very familiar and warm. I'm foreign, but not that foreign, if that makes any sense. People are really laidback, they kind of just expect you to fall into the way things work. It's refreshing. I like this place.

Photos from Beiling Gongyuan:





And of my apartment:





In other news, I boiled and drank the tap water for the first time today and haven't died yet. All the stuff that can kill me should be dead right?

Hope you are well!