Sept 27 2013

Friday- with Wednesday classes. Not a problem for me, but Katie gets four classes so that can’t have been too fun for her, I suppose. We headed over around 10 AM. There wasn’t really any rain, but it was definitely cold! Leggings and a skirt, plus two sweaters. Katie and I didn’t have much space for winter gear, so we really need to buy some good jackets! And mittens! And boots!

Anyways, we headed over, said hi to a ton of kids, and sat around our office for a good bit.

Lunch wasn’t too bad.

I QQ’d with a kid or two during that next time, because it’s ‘nap time’ or something for them, as well as exploring the internet and reading. Nothing too exciting. Eventually I went to go teach  my Grade 3 class though, class 1.

Holy monkeys on a stick, it was madness. I had a kid spill all of his ink on the floor so everyone flooded over to watch it and they brought out like 2 mops so at least some of them could do something, but it was pretty dramatic. I had kids drawing and hiding them when I came around, kids whispering and playing Cat’s Cradle, and other kids playing with buttons and random things they had found. It was ridiculous. I had a teacher come by twice to try and silent them.

I even used my fun object lesson, about teaching them words ‘Funny’ and ‘Scary’ and ‘Angry’ so that got them laughing but never quite paying attention. The closest to a good moment is when I get kids to pull out their books and start working on an assignment in there. The only issue through that is they get confused on a part or two, or they HAVE to show me. Which is cute, but they will drag me across the room, or scream for me. So they almost behave, almost!

So that was pretty crazy. Then around dinner time we had a ton of my girls come through and talk with us and the like. We’ve been invited to go to spend time with another one of my girls! Yonex from Grade 4. Such a cutie! We’ll spend Saturday with her, the Saturday after the Holiday Break. So that should be fun, I’m already excited!

I managed to get Katie to come with me to dinner- she was too nauseated to really eat, but I was starving so I wolfed down a few bites before we headed back to our office, although there was no free time outside [we later realized they went to the gym]. But it was a good thing, because we needed to run through our Class 9 lesson again, because I didn’t think we had enough going on for the class yet. Katie had made a presentation about popular American drinks, so we added one about Family, so I grabbed pictures off Facebook and made a quick one for that.

Thank goodness, because we would have died in class without it!

Class 9 is fun, but they’re getting more casual and okay with talking during class. Katie and I aren’t too sure on how to handle it, with Nicole in the back, and these kids are older so they won’t really want to clap or anything like that, you know? But we’re probably going to have to come up with something.

It took a while to get started though, trying to bring all the kids in. But we eventually did. For the class, Nicole wants us following the lesson as well as share more about American culture. So there, we watch the section video for whatever Episode we’re at. It takes up to 10 minutes or so with the video review. Then in their books they have an ‘Activity Page.’ The directions are in Chinese so we don’t always know exactly what they are supposed to do, but there are answer pages so we just do that. I knew we’d need to soak up the minutes so we let the kids work on the Activity page and then we reviewed the answers with them.

After that, our presentations. Katie went over the drinks that she put together. We asked them questions about them [if they have them here in China, etc], to use up time as well. It had only been half an hour by the time she finished, meaning another half hour to go! That was ridiculous, haha. So we drew out my short family presentation as well. We went over all the words [siblings, grandparents, cousins, in-laws], and I shared a ton of pictures to keep things interesting. I told them a little about my family, and then I brought in Eddy who is dating my sister, so to use up more time I talked about him being Mexican and shared his full name for them and such- I think one of the boys is learning Spanish so he thought that was pretty cool.

We quizzed them on that as well before going back to the book. On the side of the scripts there, it talks about definitions of words, and things that relate to the lesson. How to introduce oneself, talking about drinks, things like that. Then we went over similar things with them on the board- in the book they said “neat idea” where in America, “neat” can be a pretty lame word, so we gave them a few more suggestions, and we even went over a few pet names. In China, it seems like ‘Lucky’ is something they use, but we made it clear that it’s not used in America. A time or two I raise my voice to talk to them when they’re getting pretty loud. And in that classroom, my voice carries pretty well!

We sang to Selena Gomez and then class was over!

However, Katie’s knee has been gradually getting worse. It started out like a swollen bugbite- until the redness spread and it started to hurt. Then there was puss and swelling- and the other day it start swelling most of her knee and down into her calf. Not good. Plus the pain had been making her a bit nauseated so I made her tell Nicole.

She took us to the school nurse.

Who told us to go to the hospital!

Which made us pretty nervous. Chinese hospital. A hospital. Hospital!

We were going to go the next day, but Nicole talked to the school headmaster who suggested we go take care of it right away. So the school driver dropped us by our place where Katie grabbed her passport and then we headed a few streets over to the hospital. Not too far away, but the car entrance definitely looks ghetto.

It’s pretty clean by Chinese standards, but definitely unacceptable by American hospital regulations, let me put it that way. We stopped by to see a security guard who Nicole talked to. He checked out her knee, asked if she banged it or what happened, and told us the main ‘skin doctors’ were out for the weekend- meaning we wouldn’t see them for over a week because of the holiday!

So we went to see a basic doctor guy. He checked it out, and started coming up with a plan. They tested Katie to see if she was allergic to anything, and we had to wait a while to see how that worked. We had one guy come over and talk to Nicole about it. He was very enthusiastic and excited to be talking to Americans! It was pretty funny.

Then we sat inside the little office room, where we had one of the janitors come in, sit down and try to talk to us. Truth be told, it’s always a pretty awkward experience trying to communicate because there are only so many words that they understand. Lots of awkward silences- so thank goodness we are used to them! They just love staring at us, it’s kind of funny. Anyways, Nicole eventually got us out so we crossed the parking lot to the main building, up an elevator [big spacious elevators just like American hospitals] and to the second floor.

That’s where they attached Katie to an IV drip! For hating needles, she handled it very well. I took pictures! Haha. At first it sounded like we’d have to be there all night. Oh, and by the way, they said it was an inflammation.  So that’s what was going on.

They gave her a thing of glucose, and then another form of penicillin and then another glucose thing at the end. Small 100 ml bottle before and after the 500 ml one. It looked like it would take all night- not cool. So we rushed it and let more drip. Possibly not the best idea, but whatever.

It cost a little more to use a bed, but I think it may have been worth it. I mean, are they sanitary? Not really. They don’t even look that clean. Kind of really disgusting. You can see stains. But we propped Katie against the blanket for her back and crowded on the little cot to chat.

The next 3 hours were actually a bit of fun. And definitely a bonding experience for us with Nicole, which is great because we haven’t spent too much time with her lately! We talked about next week, and we made plans to hang out and go shopping again. At one point she left to go find us food, and so she told the guy across the room [there were about 10 beds in the room. Three of us on a bed and then another two guys across the room]. The sick guy was asleep, but his friend was there, helping him out and staying in the other bed. He was super cute and sweet, trying to talk to us. He’s from Hainan and is a building contractor here in Guiyang. We couldn’t get too much after that, though. But we did some counting! He counted up to thirty in English, and then I ended up counting to almost forty in Chinese. Which is saying something because the day before I couldn’t remember anything after three [san]!

Nicole finally returned with snacks. Things we had never tried! She said it was BBQ’d tofu that was fresh, but we think it was fried. I am not a fan, but Katie liked it. I tried a few pieces in with the seasoning on the side, though. Spicy, but it helped the flavor a bit. She also got flat packages of flavored mushroom stringy pieces… It’s hard to explain and I wasn’t going to eat any but I did. And it wasn’t too bad! It was pretty good, actually. Super weird, but good. It was a ton of fun trying this new stuff! There was also little sweet cookies that look like oyster crackers but even smaller and very yummy. That and little chocolate crunchy cookies that make me think of the cookie cereal back in the states. With that, she got two flavored milk drinks. They come in little cups and powders with gelly things, and you put hot water in them. Katie and I shared a honey-ish original flavoring. The jelly thing was coconut, she said. It definitely wierded me out some, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m just having a hard time getting used to fruit flavored milk. It’s so odd! But Katie is loving it, so she drank most of it, which was fine by me.

Let’s see what else we talked about… oh, we asked Nicole to give us Chinese names! She’s given us her family name, but it’s going to take a while to think of names for us. She said her mother would love to have two more daughters, so that’s always good, too, haha. And Nicole said how she came to the hospital not because it’s her job, but because we are her friends. We’re like sisters, now. She is such a sweetheart, though, we love her so much.

Finally towards the end we started making bets. Nicole won the first one, seeing how fast the big bottle could drain- so we’ll be taking her out to dinner sometime. We thought we were done with the big bottle so we were all excited and ready to go- but then they brought out another little one! Except we did get through that in about 20 minutes, where I won, so they have to buy me earrings, haha. Nicole also showed us some fun pictures of her beautiful sister and other fun clothes that she’s bought recently. Her boyfriend is coming into town this weekend and we’re trying to convince her to introduce us because he doesn’t like her taking pictures of him, so we’ll see how that goes…

It was just after midnight by the time we got out. We hailed [well, Nicole did] a taxi and got home for 10 RMB. It’s just a few streets off, not too far, so that was pretty good. We chatted a few minutes as we headed up, and then split our ways.

Though it was late, we ended up eating another snack or two and talking for another hour before we felt tired enough to actually go to bed. And by then, we were definitely exhausted! It was quite an adventure. And my first experience spending a bit of time in the hospital without it being ME having issues. So we decided it was better her than me. Or Katie would freak out more and I’d be extra quiet… haha. We’ve already decided it’s a fun memory.