Happiness is a 26-Ring Binder

It’s raining here and just past midnight. My class is at 10 tomorrow, so I’m staying up a little later than normal to get a few things done. Actually, I procrastinated earlier by going to the “Movie Night” sponsored by my school. It was “A World without Thieves” — recommended. It’s in Mandarin. Of course I watched it with English subtitles but fun to pick out a word of the Chinese here and there.

Just starting to get really organized with my school work. I have a 26-ring binder. And you thought you only needed 3, right? Apparently this is how it’s done here. Anyway, it’s such a relief to be able to re-order my various notes. I’m doing a lot of copying, which helps with memorizing vocabulary, but I’m having a hard time practicing my speaking. Although I’m a lot less shy than I normally am, it’s still not great for making friends and things. On the other hand, my roommates make me talk. They are so patient with my slow comprehension and then full of praise when I get together a sentence.

Today was the big day, by the way. I went to the hospital with Mogu. (Yes, Lizzie, quite an adventure!) We splurged and took a cab, because we were pressed for time. This turned out to be good thing, at least on the way there… We got there just before they closed for lunch. Most offices shut down for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. Anyway, we got there in time. There were hardly any other patients! I was ready for a swarm of people, but apparently this hospital is just for foreigners and Chinese people that are about to go overseas. So, like everywhere else the bureaucracy is about 10 times more complicated than it needs to be. We go to the first window and gather paperwork. This is normal, I guess. Then we go to another teller who gathers the money and issues a receipt. Because it was about lunch time, we didn’t waste any time finding the first examination room. There turned out to be about half a dozen, I think. We zipped from one to the next: one takes my pulse; one takes my blood pressure; one checks my eyes; one gets my weight and height; there’s an ultrasound; there’s an x-ray; then there’s the urine and blood tests. Whew! I guess that’s eight. Anyway, it was fine. Of course, they drew blood last. I didn’t get light-headed or anything! I don’t suppose they had to take that much, but I didn’t watch.

After consulting with her friends, I bought Mogu a CD as a thank you — Radiohead’s Pablo Honey. Ha! Can’t really be sure that she likes it, but she seemed delighted to receive it. Mission accomplished. I have to return to the hospital on Monday to retrieve the results. I told Mogu I could go alone this time. If I take a cab it’ll be a breeze, but I’ll probably try my luck with the bus. Now that I know what it looks like, I’m more confident that I can negotiate my way there and back. We’ll see. I don’t have class on Monday, so I’m free to get lost!

Tomorrow I have another chaperoned field trip: buying a cell phone (shou3ji1 = hand machine). My super cool speech teacher Liu2 Lao3shi1 (Prof. Liu or “Cindy”… and not to be confused with Liu4 Lao3shi1) is going to take me after our lesson. She is by far the most interested of my three teachers. At our first meeting she said she made it clear that she wanted to spend most of our class just talking. So, I can prepare a topic and for the first hour we’ll discuss. She seems to try to make the second hour more structured, loosely following the textbook to introduce new vocab and practice pronunciation. She’s friends with my listening teacher Du4 Lao3shi1 (Prof. Du4). Du4 Lao3shi is a little… intense. I was afraid that she didn’t seem to like me, but despite her serious face she can be very complimentary. She’ll make me repeat something 5 or 6 times until I get it right. It’s nice to get that kind of attention. Even so, I was surprised at the end of our last class that she suggested that we try to get together along with Liu2 Lao3shi1 some time this weekend. I didn’t expect any kind of invitation from her, but there you go.