Shenzhen met me yesterday with open arms.....24 hours on a train and 5 minutes in the city and my upper lip becomes target practice for the first flying fire ant that I have ever set eyes (or fingers) on. As I'm waiting for my luggage at the back of the Shenzhen Railway station and taking in the thick, tropical air of my new home city, the ant goes to town on my lip and bites it. Because of my cat-like reflexes I was able to get ahold of the creature and put him out of his misery, but not before my lip started to swell. Yeesh....I had the 'fat lip' syndrome for about three hours last night, but then it began to calm down. I couldn't take any benadryl because we had our medical exams this morning and we weren't allowed to take any medication or eat or drink after midnight.
The train to Shenzhen....who would have thought that 24 hours on a train could go by so quickly, granted I did sleep over half of the time, but still....the trip on the train seemed substantially better than my airplane trip to China earlier in the month. We slept in the 'hard sleepers' (ie not first class as we were previously promised) but that was not a problem. I am of the mind that the hard sleepers were much better. They were sectioned off into six-person compartment (3 bunks up each side of the walls), but there were not any doors to the compartments so it felt sort of like an orphanage on wheels, for everyone was able to peek their heads around the corner and see everyone else. The first class compartments actually get a bit claustrophobic, and they were decorated in frilly Pepto-bismal pink. There was much poker to be played, many conversations to be had and uncountable numbers of instant pot noodles (called 'convenient noodles' in China) eaten. When we disembarked we had to go collect our luggage which was thankfully sent ahead of us on Monday afternoon. Had I been forced to drag my suitcases through the Beijing West Rail Station, I just might not have made it to Shenzhen in one piece. My friends and I were quite the site without the luggage in tow.....my backpack was around my front, so that I could protect the goods from thieves and my computer was slung sideways over the backpack. Then, even though we were at the station 3, yes 3 hours before the train departed, there weren't any seats to sit in. So.....in total Chinese fashion, Shawn broke out a newspaper, gave everyone a piece of it, and we sat in the middle of the waiting room on paper and waited for the train to board. Next to us a beggar was soliciting money and at the other end of my eyeshot was a little boy peeing on the floor near the window.....I'm telling ya, the diaper market in China has yet to be tapped.....little kids merely sport shorts with big pre-cut holes in the butt.
Back to Shenzhen.....I think I'm going to LOVE it. Even though it's very new, it screams "Jakarta" to me with its tropical allure and buildings built largely of tile (all the better to be cleaned by rainstorms). At 7:30 this morning we were wisked by the bureau to the Port hospital to be poked and prodded sufficiently until it was decided that we weren't teriminally ill and were not bringing wonky diseases into the country. I started off with the chest xray....and b/c of it I got to experience all kinds of radiation. They didn't put the lead guards on us and as soon as I walked into the room, I could see my lungs on the screen in front of me; so that means the xray machine was running all the time...interesting. After that I waited in lines to have my blood drawn (grumpy nurse lady b/c I didn't know what my blood type was...i think that's why she moved the needle around as she pulled it out so that I would bleed more or something...for her...mission accomplished). Then I had an ultrasound (not for pregnancy mind you, for the function of the pancreas, spleen etc.). Then I had my teeth checked for black gums, then an ECG, then height and weight and bp and heart listening. Then, because X-ray man was an idiot I got to get radiated some more. He forgot to take the actual chest photo of the first 30 of us, so I went back and gave them a picture of my lungs. Fun fun...I got a free can of Coke out of it though...they figured we were all about to fall over and die from hunger, so the sugar helped.
The food here is amazing! The Education Bureau has put us up here in high style! All the weight people've lost in the last month will be back in days eating the buffets like we are...i've not seen this much food since i left America....yum. However, I'll be glad to get back to Chinese food soon. At the moment (this very moment, I am taking advantage of my western ammenties) here I am using in-room DSL and listening to CNN for the first time in a month....kinda nice...but I'd like my apt. even better. All in good time. Friday we move 'home.' The school we had meetings at today was beautiful, reminded me of Pattimura (an elementary school in Jakarta). I wish I could teach there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment