lazy sunday

[I am aware that it is not Sunday. But I wrote this post on a Sunday and sent it to my ghost poster, who had a hell of a weekend, it sounds like! Fortunately, I have managed to worm my way through the Great Firewall of China. I feel like a freaking ninja. Moving on...]

I am hungover from drinking two beers last night (yes, that’s right), so today’s post is going to be a photo post.

Here is a tourist lady posing with one of the zillions of weird giant statues in Beijing’s ridiculously cool contemporary art district, 798.

Here is a pictorial representation of my first fortune cookie in China, and my first time eating chicken bones (the skewers), at the hospital’s 15th anniversary staff party.

Here is some of the staff at the staff party, posing with their raffle prizes, which were humidifiers. In the raffle prior to this one, staff were given toasters. As a parting gift, we all got a 5kg bag of rice and giant tub of honey. Okay!

Here is an adorable Chinese girl, eating cotton candy adorably.

And, last but not least, here is a dog (yes, that's right), being fucking awesome.

morning constitutional

Note to self: Do not leave the house without a camera. This morning as I was leaving my apartment to pick up some essentials (overpriced American cereal and Silk soymilk), I thought about putting my camera in my pocket, and then I was like, but I’m just taking a quick walk through the westernized luxury compound, there won’t be anything to take a picture of, right? WRONG. About one third of the way from my place to the food mart was an elderly Chinese man standing on a patch of grass, verbally coaxing his two pet guinea pigs into a little rectangular carrier dangling from a stick. Let me repeat: an elderly Chinese man standing on a patch of grass, verbally coaxing his two pet guinea pigs into a little rectangular carrier dangling from a stick. I know they were pets and not just wild guinea pigs because A., I’ve walked around my area quite a bit and have seen no wild guinea pigs, and B., they were wearing little ribbons around their necks. This scene was made all the more surreal by the loungey techno music emanating from the nearby fusion restaurant. So, I took a mental picture instead, and have recreated it for you here:

bay-jeeng

Oh hello! So, I am in China. Aside from my inability to connect to Facebook, Blogger, Youtube, or this here blog (this post is being posted by a ghost, see), things are going well. Here are some snippets from my first few days.

*The first thing I did here, after a futile attempt at sleep following being deposited in the middle of the night at my apartment door by a nice man who spoke no English and who waited two hours for me at the airport while the airport people located the luggage of half the plane, was go to Starbucks. I know I know, but I was pretty terrified when I first poked my head out into my new world, and when I saw the familiar letters off in the distance I couldn’t help myself and ran straight into the warm, welcoming arms of my Comfort Zone. Also, I hadn’t really slept in 30-some hours and needed some freaking American coffee. And a muffin.

*They have ginger shampoo and conditioner here! It is just a version of Revlon Flex (gross), but it really does smell like ginger, and I love ginger (I also like the bottle design). Browsing around a Chinese drug store is way too much fun. There are entire aisles for face lightening products and eyebrow razors. Maxi pad packages have cartoon rabbits on them.

*On my maiden voyage outside my apartment, I saw a small child pee on the sidewalk through split-crotch pants. And with that, this whole experience finally felt real to me.

*My apartment is in a kind of ridiculous Westernized luxury compound, which also consists of a hotel, a shopping mall, a country club, a bowling alley, a bunch of overpriced restaurants, and, it turns out, two Starbuckses. In the apartment itself, my sole roommate and I have three bedrooms, king-sized beds, two bathrooms, two flat-screen TVs, maid service, and a washer/dryer with a mind of its own. When I told the ER doctor where I was living and for how long (I’m interning in the ER), he replied, “A month and a half?! Who’s paying for that?!” I pointed at the ground, indicating the hospital. “Oh shit,” he said. “Well, you should really check out the country club.”

*My brain is going to quickly explode from Nonsensical Translation Overload. Here is an advertisement for what I believe is another ridiculous Westernized luxury compound:

*I had what I believe to be my first mutton experience. My roommate and I were at a maybe Kazakh, maybe Mongolian restaurant on the non-Westernized side of the proverbial tracks and did that thing where you don’t know what anything is so you just order what everyone else seems to be having. What everyone else seemed to be having were skewers of mutton. Chewy but well-seasoned, it at least did not necessitate napkin concealment.

Next up: more about working in the hospital, or, you know, the ostensible reason I came here.