Needles, Kidney Punches, and Free-Form Philosophy

I've been in Guangzhou for less than a week, now, yet so much has happened. Since arriving last Saturday evening (local time), I have gone through preliminary orientation, completed my medical check, searched for an apartment, observed classes at my school, and reacquainted myself with the wonderful deliciousness that is Chinese yogurt. The drinkable yogurt I'd been enjoying for the past month in Maine was good, but it just doesn't compare to the yogurt here. I don't know what it is, but here is it creamy and rich and hits that perfect balance between tangy and sweet.

But enough about yogurt. The real highlight of the past few days was the mandatory medical check required for foreigners desiring to get a residence permit to work in China. So you know, I am one of seven new teachers newly arrived in Guangzhou, and we are all going through orientation together before being split up to our different Centers. We arrived at the hospital at 8:15am, and spent a good 45 minutes queuing first for one person to check our forms and then for another person to check our passports and collect the fee. Then, we took our forms across the street to the hospital proper, where we began our round of tests. This was, potentially, the most thorough medical exam I have ever had, and when you consider how many tests we underwent, the 3.5 hours we were there doesn't seem so bad. We had an abdominal ultrasound, a resting ECG, and a chest x-ray, they examined our eyesight, looked in our ears, noses, and mouths, weighed us, measured our height, temperature, and blood pressure, took 2 vials of blood and a urine sample, and listened to our lungs, whacked us in the kidneys, and asked us about four times if we were pregnant or had any communicable diseases. And throughout the whole process, you had to be vigilant about when it was your turn, because the Chinese doctors and nurses weren't  even going to attempt to read your name. Instead, they would hold up the form to the waiting area, and you had to squint to see if it was your 1 inch square photo taped to the top. Nonetheless, I survived and I don't think they'll have found any medical reason to deny my residency application.

GZ Metro (http://fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/)

Now, I'm still in the process of getting an apartment, so I will save that whole story for later. One last thing, though, about my first day of observation. I sat in on a class of primary-school aged kids and one of 15-16 year-olds. The older kids were doing a speaking game where you have to talk as long as possible without stopping (even to say "um"). The girl who managed to go the longest offered us this piece of philosophy: women are like pizzas; there's a lot of different things about them all on the surface, but men are like (Chinese) buns (steamed and stuffed with filling), where they hide everything inside. Oh, and life is like a bowl of porridge: blank and bland, you have to strive to fill it in with your own actions to give it some color and flavor.

Well, the porridge that is my life is certainly getting some color and flavor here in Guangzhou. What exactly that does to the mix of my life as a whole, well, that remains to be seen.