Monday morning I met Jenny (one of the Chinese office workers at school) to head to Xi'an to have my medical for my Chinese residency. A 7am start, and out into the cold Chinese morning. A 2minute cab ride to the bus station, then a 1 hour bus ride. The bus ride was pretty interesting, lots to see in the way into Xi'an, then when entering Xi'an itself, the old city walls are really impressive, I'll definately take my camera next time. After the bus, it was another 5 minute cab ride to the processing office, which is where the fun began.
It started with the usual form filling out, I must have written my passport number 1,000 times this past month with visas, flights and permits. After the form was filled out, it was time to start the conveyor-belt of tests. You basically go from room to room without stopping, and each room has a different test. So, room one: X-ray time. A full chest X-ray. Trying to stand flat against the board and hold my breath for long enough was fun. Then, up some stairs and time for a blood sample to be taken. The guy took his time to actually get it into my vein once he was under my skin, and then afterwards it didn't wanna stop bleeding. After the blood test; ultrasound. The woman greased-up my washboard abs (lol :-p ) and then ran her scanner over my stomach, then asked me to turn on my side and she did my kidney area. A quick hop next door, where some sort of heartrate monitor was hooked up to me. "Clips" placed on my wrists and ankles, and heartrate monitors around my chest. Twenty seconds of anticipation later, I was told it was done. Those were a long twenty seconds though. I was expecting an electric shock or something. It's really bizarre when you don't know what people are saying to you! The final room and it was blood pressure test time. Did the test, and started to head out of the place, Jenny was saying it was the quickest she'd ever seen all the tests done. Spoke too soon. A "doctor" came running after us and told me to come back, claiming my blood pressure readings were too high to be right. They did the test again, a bit lower this time, but apparently still high. Meh. I blame the stress of being in some wierd science lab. None of them looked like doctors, it was as if the kids had found their parents medical equipment and were just having fun with it!
After that, Jenny had to grab some books for school, so we went to a book-mall in Xi'an. China loves specialisation and dedicated things. Loads of restaurants specialise in only certain dishes, and loads of shopping malls only contain shops with one thing. You have shoe malls, clothes malls, book malls. This book mall was huuuuuge. Around 40 stores, each with mountains of books - quite litrally. Very few shelves, just huge mountains of books on the floor in the center. Getting the ~100kg of books home on public transport was interesting, but we got there in the end.
We arrived back at Weinan and went into school. Sheldon and Rob were there, and later Cheer (Rob's girlfriend, Tim's student) came by with Rob's pet dog. Tim finally woke up and headed over :P then we went and grabbed some food with Jenny. A wierd lamb with bread stew/soup called "yang rou ju mo" which was nicer than I thought. Then we heading to the bank of China where I opened an account and changed my English money. I got a KICK ASS bank card. It's a freaking Ox (its just turned to the year of the Ox.)
Bad ass.
Following that, Tim helped me move into my apartment. Blog post on that coming right up.
