Hello All,
I am still having a wonderful time, apart from the fact that
I got really sick last week. I don’t know what is with me getting sick in
foreign countries, but I must say that I am not a fan. I just had a bad stomach virus, but it was so
bad that I decided to go to the hospital on Sunday. I texted a friend who lives here and she
suggested a hospital and texted me the address. So I got in a cab, and found
the hospital fine. Once I was inside, however, I walked through half of the
hospital before finding the registration desk.
Nothing is in English so navigating here is quite the task, especially
when you feel like you are going to fall over. By the grace of God (literally)
a woman in line spoke English and she asked them if any of the doctors or
nurses did. The answer was a definite “no”, so they wrote down the address of
another hospital that had an international clinic.
So I got in another cab, and made my way to hospital number
2. After searching there for 15 minutes,
a teenage girl could tell I was getting flustered and walked me to the
international clinic. Once I finally got there after an hour and a half of
driving/walking around, a doctor was there that spoke English. She did a blood
test, and gave me some medicine after discovering I had the virus. Overall, the
second hospital was great, but a checkup that would have taken me an hour or so
took me the entire evening because finding people that speak English are so
hard to come by. I realize that I am the one who should be speaking Mandarin,
since I am the one in the foreign country, but man, when you don’t feel good
and no one understands you, it is all you can do not to just cry or get angry.
In addition to my adventures in Beijing hospitals, we went
to the Olympic Park and the Temple of Heaven last week. The Olympic Park was
very impressive, and although there is not a lot to see, it was definitely
worth the trip. It was so odd seeing the Olympic stadium (nicknamed the ‘birds
nest’) after seeing it on TV in 2008 and thinking it was so far away. Our
friend and colleague, Jozy, bought us the characters/mascots from the 2008
Beijing Olympics which was really sweet of her.
The Temple of Heaven
was beautiful as well. It is a circular temple, which is different from other architecture
I have seen here, since everything seems to be square. Like the Forbidden City,
it consists of multiple buildings that extend over acres of land. It was
beautiful, but we went on an incredibly hot day. The weather is getting
consistently hotter (comparable to NC), and in addition, the pollution is also
getting worse. I don’t know if the smog gets worse with the heat, but that
seems to be the trend. There is a radio tower that I can usually see from my
apartment window, and for the past week there has been so much smog that I can’t
see it. Every time I go outside, I feel like I am smoking, which is apparently
pretty accurate since the rate of lung cancer here is 5 times the world average
due to the pollution.
Tomorrow (Friday) is a holiday, so we will have a 3 day
weekend. I should I have more stories/adventures on Monday. Until then :)
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