Blood, Urine and No Electricity

So, the dreaded medical. I arrived at the Hospital on the other side of town (very close to the Henan exposition centre, which is is the exciting set of buildings in the North East of the city that can be seen on Google Earth) at 8:30 ready for my medical. After a relatively short time queuing to get the forms I went into the main hospital area which consisted of one corridor with a number of examination rooms off to the side. The corridor was packed with people, mainly a large group of young Chinese military recruits being tested before going overseas, their presence, although initially amusing was one of the reason that the whole thing took so long. Drawing blood was comfortingly hygienic and therefore not at all, however giving a urine sample was more exciting. Firstly it involved a visit to the current holder of 'China's Foulest Toilet' and secondly a perilous trip down to the other end of the corridor, negotiating a large crowd carrying a lidless pot of pee. It was only the regular appearance of a patient carrying their potentially disgusting sample that prevented the corridor becoming a free for all. In the whole process took four and half hours for a series of what seemed pretty arbitrary tests. The ECG was the most frustrating; the doctor demonstrated the same skill and patience with the machine that the Monkey shows with the bones in '2001:A Space Odyssey'. It was only after pressing the same harder and faster for ten minutes that he decided to call for help. After all of this we discovered I had to return to collect the results today, so it is still not over. Woe is me.

I returned to school to find that it was without power and would be until some point in the evening, fortunately the weather has been brilliant these past few days so I went out to the playing field and ended up having a knock about with some teachers. I discovered that there is a teachers football team that occasionally plays teams from the Foreign Language School, which would be fun.

After dusk the students were still expected to be in their classrooms for self study, not to be foiled by something so simple as a power cut, they were all equipped with small battery powered desk lamps. It appears that there is nothing that will keep them from studying. I was in the teachers office crowding round a laptop watching the new series of Knight Rider (which I can now authoritatively dismiss as absolute rubbish) until I was dragged away by two students in Grade 1 who wanted me to come and talk to their class. My first lesson of sorts!

The combination of the lack of power (and the resultant excitement created by desk lamps) and the presence of a LoWai (Old Outsider) made the class quite unruly. I skipped about a few different topics until they became bored and asked me to sing a song, after some futile resistance (remember it is me versus 50 well drilled Chinese students shining their desk lamps into my face, there was no need for them to say 'we have ways of making you sing') I sang some of 'The General' by dispatch until I ran out of memorable lyrics. After a song in return from one of the girls in the class, the power came back and I took my leave.

It is the next day now and I have just met the other foreign teacher at the school. He is a Pole called Voytk or Tufu (which means Butcher) who has been in China for six years. He comes across as slightly deranged but jolly, and laughed at the bureaucracy that surrounds the visa system. He also told me that he knew of plenty of opportunities for me to earn a bit of extra money at language schools and some of his many projects in the city. I will keep this in mind, but I think it is most important to get (legally) established at this school first and then see what my options are.

Anyway, I must get ready to leave to the Hospital for the third time, my goal of a working visa is in sight!