A Visit to the Doctor (and the 39 hours surrounding it)

By Ruth

Train #1

On Friday I had another prenatal appointment (4^th appointment, 3^rd doctor, 2^nd country). I don't mind prenatal appointments, but I wish we didn't have to travel 12 hours to get there. On Thursday night we headed to the train station to catch an overnight train to Beijing. Since you can only buy train tickets 1 week ahead and there are apparently only a few tickets allocated to Weinan, the only train we could get had us arriving 2 hours before our appointment, cutting it a little close since we had to get all the way across the city.

Unfortunately, our train was already half an hour late by the time it got to Weinan. We could just hope it wouldn't lose even more time as the night went on. This train was one of the few double-deckers I have been on. Usually the sleeper compartments have three bunks stacked on top of each each other, but the double-deckers are broken into two levels that are two bunks high. This is an advantage if you are on the top bunk because there is less climbing up and down.

When I headed to the bathroom I was very surprised to see a western toilet. Surprised and not so happy. I like western toilets in private, and they're fine in religiously-cleaned places like Starbucks, but in normal public restrooms, give me a squattie any day. China restrooms in general range from dirty to gag-you gross, and train bathrooms are definitely not at the top end. Western toilets are even worse because people aren't used to them and good aim doesn't seem to be a high priority. For the rest of the train ride, I walked down a couple of cars to the “normal” bathroom.

The Point of the Trip

We got into Beijing the next morning about 1 hour and 15 minutes late, but fortunately we got to the hospital just in time. We aren't the only ones who travel in from out of town for appointments; several others were waiting with travel bags. Everything was fine at the doctors – just a typical, don't-do-much kind of visit. We did get to hear the baby's heartbeat again.

Unfortunately, they still charge you for don't-do-much visits. Medical expenses are a little more shocking here because we pay for everything up front, then submit claims to insurance for reimbursement. While being treated at a normal Chinese hospital usually costs a couple of dollars, this is a Western-standards hospital, probably the best medical care available in the country, and the price reflects that. I don't know anyone about to have a baby who doesn't worry about money a little bit, and a big old doctor bill doesn't do much to make you feel better about that.

The Western Experience

The country's best hospital is located conveniently close to the country's best Mexican food (and best milk-shakes!). Just a five minute walk and we are sitting in Pete's Tex Mex ordering our old standards – a burrito and amazing peanut-butter chocolate milkshake with a couple of cinnamon rolls for the road. The novelty of these foods just makes them taste all the better.

After eating we headed next door to Jenny Lou's, a western foods store. It was my first time, and I was in awe. It was like being in a tiny American supermarket. I stood before a whole row of cereals. Dozens of different kinds. This is the kind of thing I dreamed about (literally, several times) when I first came to China. I may have teared up a little bit when I spotted Corn Chex, I was so moved. Every aisle had new things I hadn't seen since summertime. At one point I glanced up and what did I see before me but MAC AND CHEESE! Whole boxes of it just sitting there waiting to be bought. I had no idea it could be found in China. It was a truly incredible moment, one that only a true Mac and Cheese lover could understand.

To complete our western experience, we headed to IKEA (also close by) to look at some baby furniture. While IKEA itself is western, it has really been taken in by the Chinese middle-upper class population. We only saw a couple of other foreigners there and probably close to a thousand Chinese. People don't just come for the shopping – they come for the experience. In nearly every display, people are relaxing on chairs, sprawled out on beds, reading a book, chatting with friends, sitting at a desk working on their computer. They will sit for hours at the cafe. But a lot of people also buy things. We bought...two ice trays. But I came away with lots of ideas!

Finally, we headed back to our company's hospitality center to pick up train tickets. Another catch to the train system in China is that for the most part, you can only buy tickets for trains leaving from the city you are currently in. This seems particularly stupid to me, since most times when you travel somewhere, you also have to travel back. Since many times we are traveling back within a few days (or in this case, the same day) of arrival, there is no guarantee there will still be train tickets available. Enter the travel agent, who will charge a hefty commission to buy tickets for you and have them waiting. Our train tickets were supposed to be waiting for us but unfortunately, they weren't. This was a problem since our train was leaving in 4 hours. We called the company and they assured us the tickets would be there in a couple more hours.

As we waited, we decided to try out another Beijing phenomenon – ordering pizza. Get this – you can call one of several pizza restaurants and they will deliver right to your door. Isn't that amazing? It didn't seem quite as amazing when two hours had passed and we still hadn't gotten our pizza. It finally did arrive – cold and rather disappointing – but just in time before we had to leave for the train station. Fortunately, our tickets had also arrived by then.

The Last 12 (er, 15) Hours

The train ride back was uneventful. The others in our compartment stared suspiciously at us the whole time, but as soon as the train pulled out I went to bed, earplugs and face mask in place. I have no doubt they were still staring. I've never seen a Chinese person use either, and they seem to grow up with a certain immunity to loud noises and bright light.

I slept pretty well on the train ride despite the acute discomfort of my back and hips. Normally the hard, shelf-beds don't bother me, but these days even my own comfortable bed leaves me feeling arthritic. After two nights on a train, I felt like I could hardly turn over. Still, during the times when I lay awake thinking how uncomfortable I was, I also thought about all crowded seating cars we past getting on the train.

The majority of Chinese will sit packed in with 100 other people overnight rather than pay extra money for a sleeper. This train was especially crowded since this is a holiday weekend (not Easter, but “Qing Ming festival” - tomb sweeping day). The aisle of the seating cars were filled with people who would be standing for the next 12 hours. So lying in bed thinking of those people, I thought, “How did I get to be one of these lucky people with a bed? I'm so rich.”

There seem to be two types of train-riders: Those who sleep until the last possible minute and those who get up at 6 or 7am regardless of when the train will arrive. Our crowd was the second type. We woke up to the crunching of apples and cucumbers and the slurping of the customary bowls of instant noodles (no train ride is complete without it!).

A few hours later we arrived at the Xian train station, which was packed with holiday travelers. We had to decide whether to wait for the next train (which would likely be late) or get a bus (which would probably take a long time) back to Weinan. I thought we should try the bus option, but it was a bad plan. Weinan is *technically* an hour away, but after an hour we had barely reached the outskirts of Xian. Once we finally got out of the huge traffic jam, we had another hour over bumpy back roads because the main highway is under construction. Eventually, 39 hours after leaving, we were happily back in Weinan. I walked in the door and immediately started cooking up some Mac and Cheese!

Scraggly film

The_British_Empire
Originally uploaded by kevsunblush

By Kevin

Today's lesson: be sure to shave your stubble before teaching, so you don't look scraggly on camera.

About ten minutes into my "Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries" lesson, during a discussion about the pros and cons of British Imperialism, there was a knock at the door. Several school officials were standing outside.

For a moment, I figured I must have crossed a line with my lesson and said something bad, so they were stopping me. After all, I was encouraging students to see both the good and the bad sides of imperialism from both the British perspective and of the peoples they colonized.

I was wrong. "We need to shoot some VCR of you teaching," explained Mr. Wang. "Is that OK?"

Slightly confused, I looked around at the group of men. One was carrying a large video camera. I put the puzzle pieces together: they wanted to film the class. I nodded and said OK. Naturally, this being China, there is no warning for this sort of thing, so none of us were prepared for this. The classroom was messy and I had about three days worth of stubble on my face. What can I say, I've had a cold for the last few days.

Hurriedly, the cameraman and a pair of assistants came in, opened the blinds on the windows, flooding the room with light, shuffled nervous students into new seats, had them (and me) remove unsightly items from our desks and told me to continue my lesson.

I continued the discussion. Students noted that the British likely saw imperialism as positive because it was a source of pride, expanding their territory and making them rich. Others suggested that some British may have been opposed to imperialism because it was expensive.

At one point, the cameraman stood behind me as I asked questions. Since he was a good six inches shorter than me, I wondered if he was able to get a good shot over my shoulder. Then he tapped me on the shoulder. "Can you speak Chinese?" he asked in Chinese. Usually, I'd say "yi dian dian," which means something like "a little tiny bit," but usually gets interpreted as humility and leads to a torrent of unanswerable questions once we get beyond the few I can successfully answer.

I thought to the recent Chinese words and phrases I'd been studying: furniture, colors, articles of clothing. They weren't going to help explain imperialism or make the school look good on camera. I shook my head. Sorry.

We continued. Students suggested that the countries colonized by the British may have seen technological advancement and new economic opportunities as positives.

Ironically, by the time we reached the negatives, the camera crew was gone. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The students who'd been shuffled into new seats scurried back. A couple students drew the blinds back in. I quieted their nervous laughter.

I quickly decided that maybe today wasn't the day to discuss a controversial quote by scholar Parag Khanna (http://www.amazon.com/Second-World-Redefining-Competition-Twenty-first/dp/0812979842/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 and http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/books/05grim.html?_r=1&ref=books) on the next Power Point slide labeling the US, China and the European Union as the three great imperial powers of the modern world. It had riled up my classes a bit earlier in the week, most jumping to their nation's defense. We were behind schedule and I figured today wasn't the day to cross that line.

After class, one of the students suggested that the school may be preparing for an evaluation. I hope not. Generally those sorts of things aren't fun experiences. Lots of smoke and mirrors to impress government officials and make colleges look better than they are. But another thought that crossed my mind was that the school is in the midst of celebrating its 50th anniversary. Could be it. Who knows.

11 Random Comments

by Ruth
1. Last week when I went to the supermarket, my taxi driver actually looked in his mirror before changing lanes. I was shocked and amazed. (The general rule is that you're not responsible for whatever is happening behind you).

2. I played some different kind of music for my freshmen class and they were supposed to identify which type was which. Didn't do so well...many of them thought the opera was folk or country and the heavy metal was jazz.

3. Speaking of music, I am enjoying the sample selection on my new ($15) Chinese mp3 player. It has all the classics: Beyonce, Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson, Linkin Park, John Denver. Really, what more do you need?

4. Still speaking of music, we are so sad to have lost Google.cn....because we lost our huge resource of free, legal music downloads.

5. My students were talking about popular hobbies in class today. For children, one of the hobbies they mentioned was "lighting things on fire." For adults, numerous people said, "drinking." Cool.

6. Today as I was leaving my office hour, "Shoe Boy" (whom we met when he came up and asked to borrow Kevin's shoes) asked me, "What do you think of pole dancing?" I said something like, "Umm..." There doesn't seem to be quite as much of an immediate pole dancing-stripper association here because I have heard people mention it before. But still, he says, "I was thinking that I want to learn pole dancing, but a Canadian teacher said it's not something that guys do unless they are gay." I was like, "Yeah...I think it would be very strange for you to do pole dancing." And then I giggled half the way home.

7. And the really bad thing about this, Shoe Boy had already talked to Kevin about this, and was apparently not satisfied with his "Don't do it!" answer. Or his Canadian teacher's suggestion. So there's a good likelihood that he'll go on and do it anyway.

8. Our students are all quite excited about the pregnancy. When I made the announcement in class, I explained that we'd be having the baby in the States and would be coming back here afterward and bringing the baby with us. I've already had to re-explain this several times. I think once they heard, "I'm having a baby," everything else just became white noise.

9. Now each week when I walk into class, my students stare intently at my stomach, trying to see if it's gotten bigger. I find this slightly unnerving, but I'm sure I'll get used to it quickly.

10. My students are all extremely concerned about my health and give me lots of advice. I actually haven't gotten much crazy advice...yet, anyway. People are very concerned about my using a computer or mobile phone. I'm sure they'd flip out about the microwave too, but they just haven't thought of it. And I'm certainly not going to tell them about drinking cold water. The horror.

11. I have reason to believe that some of my students are rather foggy about how this whole baby process works. I think some of them still don't quite understand where babies come from (even if they are already having sex). One of my students asked when the baby was going to be born and I said September. She said, "THIS September?" They're just so cute sometimes.

Kudzu

Today I was flipping through National Geographic and noticed a short little article about none other than Kudzu! If you live anywhere in the southern US, you already know exactly what I'm talking about. If you are from somewhere else where this blessed little vine doesn't exist, read on and you will be informed. Here is what it said:

"An Asian vine with flowers that smell like grape drink [can't say I've noticed that], kudzu enticed Americans at a Philadelphia exhibition in 1876. In the 1930's Southerners started planting it to halt soil erosion. They stopped in the 50's, when they realized that the hardy perennial, which can spread up to 60 feet a year, was out of control. Since then, the vine has swallowed 150,00 acres a year--eight million U.S. acres total."

The article showed a little map with kudzu areas highlighted in green. The entire state of Georgia (and of North Carolina) were solid green. Yup, that sounds about right. 8 million acres! Apparently researchers have found some kind of fungus that seems to kill it. They are planning to mix it with herbicides to make it safe enough for people to use.

I have long been of the opinion that kudzu could be a great topic for a horror movie. Preferably a 1950's horror movie. I mean, "The Blob"? Come on. This would be much more interesting and believable. Some mutant strand of kudzu that spreads so fast people wake up and they are trapped in their kudzu covered houses. Stand too close to a tree and you'll get eaten alive. This is good stuff here. Fortunately, Weinan's semi-arid climate means no kudzu, so I'm safe. However, the rest of you might want to look out.

We're Having a Baby!!

by Ruth


And in case you're a little slow on the uptake, the picture should help you out a little bit...supposing you can figure out what it is. Sure, it's not the clearest, but still pretty amazing to see, since the baby was only 3.7cm at the time. It's still probably only about 3 inches long and already has fingers and toes and fingernails and eyelids. Now that is pretty amazing! It has been really exciting to see the baby and hear the heartbeat and find out that everything is looking really good.

Now let's see, you might be interested to know that the baby is due about September 23 (my sister's birthday!). We are planning to stay in America a bit longer this summer and have the baby in Georgia. It will be really nice to be near family, friends, and good medical care. And then, after however long the doctor says is necessary for recovery, or however long it takes to get a baby passport, visa, and plane ticket, we'll be headed back to China.

We would be okay with having the baby in China – we know a lot of people who have (mostly in Beijing). But I admit I'm happy to not add “what if I have a baby in a Chinese taxi...or along side some random road with a crowd of curious onlookers...or in a local hospital!!” to the list of worries. Everyone knows that just because something is very unlikely doesn't mean you won't spend plenty of time worrying about it!

It's still hard to believe there is really a little baby growing inside of me. Sure, I can tell that something is wrecking havoc with my body, but it's hard to imagine how something that tiny can influence everything so much. In fact, the only area of your body I have been able to find that is not affected by pregnancy (at least not that I've read), is your ears. That's it. Everything else changes. A couple of the changes I think are more interesting (and not quite as gross) are:
-Your blood volume increases 40-50%. That's a really big percentage! And most of that happens in the first few months.
-Your cornea thickens and the fluid pressure in your eye decreases, so your vision may get blurry.
-You start inhaling 30-40% more oxygen.

You might not think this is as interesting as I do, but just imagine those and 500 other dramatic changes happening in your body over a short period of time. It's a little bit intimidating.

So, next year we are going to be back here in Weinan again. Kevin will still be teaching, but I will be taking care of the baby. It's a little bit of a strange concept to a lot of people here since generally the mother doesn't serve as the primary caregiver. A much more logical solution, in their eyes, would be (1) either of our parents moving in with us to care for the baby or (2) leaving the baby in America with either one of our parents. As excited as all our parents are for their first grandchild, I don't think they're cool with these options. Which is fine, because neither are we. You wouldn't think it, but when I'm telling people we are coming back here after having the baby, I have to include, “And we are bringing the baby.” They are usually surprised.

We are planning to tell most of our students this week. It should be interesting. :) I'm sure they will be very excited. This has been their dream for such a long time. More on their reactions to come...

Cooking

By Ruth

It seems like a lot of people I know (and by that I mean 3) who are around my age and write blogs talk about cooking. It always seems very impressive to me. They share recipes and show pictures of their latest baking creation and talk about cooking equipment I've never heard of. It's all very grown-up. So I thought I would try my own hand at it.

Cooking: A Personal History

I really did very little cooking pre-marriage. I was around cooking a lot, since my mom is pretty much the ultimate make-everything-from-scratch, 30 year expert kind of cook. And I was really into baking...brownies, cookies, bread. But cooking did not have the same appeal (probably because it doesn't involve enough sugar or carbs). I know I did eat during the two years I lived on my own in Yangzhou, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I ate. I do recall a lot of eggs and little packets of instant tomato soup.

Enter husband. He also somehow also managed to eat during his pre-marriage years on his own (and I really have no idea what). But somehow crackers and cheese or a bowl of cereal didn't seem quite substantial enough for dinner anymore. So I decided I'd better start cooking.

At first I was hesitant to experiment at all. In baking, I pretty much follow recipes. It's all about having good recipes. Though there has to be some kind of skill involved because somehow my mom and sisters and I all follow the same chocolate chip cookie recipe and they all turn out very differently. Anyway...as I was saying, I was very hesitant about experimenting. Now that I have become more comfortable with experimenting, a whole new world has opened up, and I am no longer able to follow a recipe (when cooking) to save my life.

I will usually start with a recipe. Sometimes I'm not even sure why, since I will disregard at least 90% of what it says. But perhaps it still gives me a certain level of security. For example, today I decided to make some bean soup, so I got out a basic bean soup recipe and proceeded to ignore it completely. Here is what I did instead.

A Not so Useful Recipe

Soak a bunch of beans (I used some unidentified large, white beans) in a bowl of water until they expand to about twice as much as you need.

Cut up a bunch of random vegetables (this time I used carrots, onion, potatoes, tomatoes, and a handful of extra green beans I had sitting in the fridge). Cut them as big or as small as you prefer, or just stop cutting when you get too bored.

Pour these into a crock-pot. Actually, by this point you'll probably have so much that you need two crock-pots. This frequently happens to me; fortunately my teammate has a crock-pot that she uses about once a year.

Dump some “essence of chicken” (something like bullion) into a bowl until it looks like enough. Add some garlic powder (just because I use garlic in everything) and then mix it up with some hot water...somewhere in the range of 4-8 cups, give or take a few. A few bay leaves, a bunch of pepper, a little more water later if it's looking low on broth, any other random spices that happen to look moderately compatible and then....

Voila! A pretty good bean/vegetable soup that is absolutely unrepeatable. It will probably turn out decently the next time you try to make it; it will just taste different every time. I suppose you could actually measure the ingredients you add, but that seems like a little too much work.

And for your future information, I don't highly recommend the large, unidentified white beans. They were too big and kind of bland, since they didn't soak up enough of the flavor. Next time I think I will go for the smaller, unidentified speckled beans.

So, are you impressed by my culinary talent? Are you ready to run try my vague recipe? Well, all I have to say is that if you try my soup recipe and it doesn't work out, you probably just did it wrong.

The Hard Parts

by Ruth

About a month ago I sat in an internet cafe in Thailand talking to my mom, finding out my grandfather had just died. I sat there at the computer crying, getting some weird looks from the loud European guys sitting nearby.

Just a few weeks later, using the internet in a hotel lobby in Frankfurt, Kevin learned that his grandmother had passed away. And then we had to hurry off to the airport to catch a flight.

Sitting in the internet cafe in Thailand, I thought back to three years ago, when I was in that same internet cafe trying to get a-hold of friends and family to tell them I just got engaged (to someone they had yet to meet).

“Hi, I wanted to tell you I'm engaged!! What? I said ENGAGED... Wait, the connection must be bad, let me call back...”
“Hi, I keep trying to call but am just getting voice mail. I have something really important to tell you so...I'll try back later...”

When you live on the other side of the world, when you are traveling almost a fourth of the year, these things don't always work out how you would want them to. You want your family to meet the man you are going to marry. You want to hear and tell important news in person. You want to be at your friends' weddings and meet their babies, or at least their spouses! You want to be there when someone in your family dies.

It's strange how I will come back to that internet cafe every year and it will hold memories of important times in my life. An internet cafe. Sitting there I thought, “This is my life. This is just how things happen.” It sounds depressing, but it actually wasn't a bitter or cynical thought. I guess it was more one of acceptance. I realized...it's okay. There are a lot of great things about our life, and this is one of the parts that is hard. It's one of the parts that will always be hard. I talk to people who have lived here for 10 or 20 years, and they still hate missing those important things happening back home.

Sometimes there is hardly even time for these things to seem real. You are so far away and everything is happening back at home. The rest of the family is gathered, the funeral happens, and you just feel so distanced from it all. You still expect things to be the same when you come back.

This is one of the hard parts of our life. And yet...and yet, it's okay.

Rome

Vatican - Statue & Shadows
Originally uploaded by kevsunblush

By Kevin

Just starting to filter through the 1200 or so photos I took during our trip to Europe (and Egypt). I'll try and post them in groups by country. So far, I've got Rome. Click on the photo or follow the link to see more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevsunblush/

Eventually, I'll try and post a blog entry or two about the trip, but since classes start Monday (or so we're told...we don't actually have a schedule just yet), I'm not sure exactly when that'll happen.

An extremely brief summary of our time Rome: we managed to be wowed by thoughts of Gladiators fighting in the Colosseum, imagined Paul being imprisoned near the Roman Forum, pictured Casears living on Palantine Hill, were a bit freaked out by people bowing before the Pope at St. Peter's Basilica, marveled at the massive collection of both ancient and modern art at the Vatican Museum and the Borgese Gallery, breathed deeply under mostly beautiful blue skies, gawked at beautiful fountains and piazzas, ate excellent lasagna, spaghetti, tortellini and pizza and rode subway cars that were completely covered in graffiti.

Traveling

(Kevin and I outside of a big Gothic cathedral in Prague)

We're finally back in Weinan! We have been gone for years. Or 6 weeks anyway, but it feels like years. It was great to get to see so many places...the Colosseum, the Vatican, the Pantheon, the pyramids, Europe in general. Whether I actually get around to telling you about it is questionable, because what do you say, really? “Prague was beautiful. The pyramids were big. Such and such was interesting.” That's pretty boring. At some point we will put some pictures up online, but since Kevin took 1200+ pictures, it might take a while to go through them. In the meantime, I will try to fill up this recent blogging void a few random thoughts I had while traveling. The first, naturally, was related to traveling itself.

Sitting next to Kevin on our last flight back to China, I thought back to the first flight we took together. We already knew each other then, but I feel like our relationship was more or less founded out of those 12 hours together. It seems like a very appropriate start to our relationship, since we have since spent so much time in airports and on planes and traveling in general.

I started to wonder how many flights we have been on together and counting up in my head. There were so many that I kept getting confused and had to start tally marks on a piece of paper. Then I started wondering how many flights I've taken overall, and the proportion of pre-China to post-China travel. (It was the middle of a long international flight and I couldn't sleep and I had already watched several dumb movies, so what else did I have to do?) I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a few, but here are the results of my calculations.

1983-2005 flights (pre-China): 18 (half of these were from going to Laos)

2005-2010 flights on my own: 21

2005-2010 flights with Kevin: 43

Total lifetime flights:81

Total flights in the last 5 years: 64

That's a lot of flights. I can only imagine how much time we've spent in airports! Of those 63, about 19 were significant international flights (meaning somewhere between 5-14 hours). 78% of my flying has been done in the last 19% of my life. Hmm, which means I have spent 19% of my life in China (or traveling to and from it). Wow, I'm young.

So anyway, I thought that it was all kind of interesting and sad. Sad because unfortunately, I still hate traveling...

The Promise Land (Otherwise known as Thailand)

We spent all of yesterday, from 5am to 9pm, gradually migrating from China to Thailand, shedding layers as we went. Every year I start thinking about Thailand and build it up in my mind for weeks or months. And the amazing thing is that when I get there, it's just as good as I expect! I think the sharp contrast helps. One day you are wearing long underwear and a down coat, the next day it's flip-flops.

The weather is perfect - not too hot, a cool breeze in the evenings, sunshine. It takes days to experience all the wonderful food options available. Thai, Italian, Mexican, Mediterranean, burgers, great milkshakes and fruit smoothies, donuts, ice cream, soft pretzels. This wouldn't seem nearly as exciting if we hadn't seen these things for months. There are multiple bookstores full of English books. And everything is so inexpensive. We are staying in a place for $6/night, and it's not bad at all. You can eat Thai food for $1. Western food is more expensive, but still more reasonable than China or America.

And people are so friendly whether they know you or not. They just smile at you and don't stare at all, like it's perfectly natural for you to exist. It's really wonderful. And especially great to be here NOT taking classes. Well, if you are sufficiently jealous by now, I have done my job. Off to get a cheap massage.