"all i need is jesus . . . and two extra strength tylenol"

Greetings from my new home! That’s right, I moved, making the two-year stint in my last apartment the longest I’ve lived continuously in any one place since starting college. (Strangely, that’s also about the same amount of time I’ve ever stayed at a job, or sustained a romantic relationship … this doesn’t say anything about me, does it??? That I've had a lot of learning experiences? Yes! Good answer.) Anyway, here are some tips I gained from the latest of my many relocations.

1. If at all possible, move into a place with a garbage disposal. Seriously, it will change your life. My daily stress has been reduced by at least 20% now that I can just wash my strawberry tops, French-pressed coffee grounds, and stuck-to-the-bottom-of-the-pot rice grains down the drain.

2. Do not succumb to laziness and Oprah by hiring 1-800-GOT-JUNK to remove things you no longer want and don’t have the energy to list on Craigslist. Although they will ensure your old dust collectors don't go to waste if possible (like by finding places to donate working electronics so people will actually use them), they cost more than hiring movers to move ALL of your stuff, and they don't tell you this until they get there. Better to donate it to my favorite thrift store, The Sidewalk.

3. Speaking of, if you live in Baltimore, do go to the 7-Eleven on South Broadway in your U-Haul and hire the first three men from Central and South America who jump into the passenger seat to move all of your stuff. Overpay them, because they will be friendly and reassuring and make fun of you when you get the truck with a 14-foot trailer stuck in the alley behind your new house and have to back it out about 100 feet ("Ella esta nerviosa! Hahaha!"). They will then get behind the wheel and do it for you.

4. Don’t drink and move, as much as you feel you deserve it, especially if you have to work a bunch of days in a row afterward, because then you may weaken your immune system and come down with a nasty respiratory infection that will cause you to miss two 12-hour shifts while you are home feverish and "managing your respiratory secretions with a tissue," and you don't get sick time yet so your shenanigans just cost you, like, three times what 1-800-GOT-JUNK did. Just saying.

And last but not least, here are a few recent highlights and fun facts from the world of psych nursing... 

The title of this post is a quote from one of my favorite patients in recent memory. She was the first actively psychotic patient I got to interview. Psychosis is fascinating--in addition to typical hyperreligiosity, this patient also had delusions of grandeur, specifically that she was an undercover cop. She had come to our unit after real cops found her sleeping in an abandoned building. When I asked about her living situation, she told me she lived in an "abandominium." On a test of cognitive functioning, she was asked to write a sentence and wrote "[Patient] was here," in mirror writing. She stated that what she wrote looked normal to her. Apparently mirror writing can be caused by damage to the brain's left hemisphere. Also, by being Leonardo DaVinci. It even happens in Chinese!

I have learned lots of new vocabulary over the last few weeks. Here are a few of my favorites:

Intermittent Explosive Disorder -- "A behavioral disorder characterized by extreme expressions of anger, often to the point of violence, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand." To put it mildly.

Neurovegetative -- The definition isn't actually terribly exciting (pertaining to the autonomic, aka, apparently, "vegetative" nervous system; and for our purposes it refers to illness indicators such as sleep, appetite, and concentration). I just like that I now get to describe people as "neurovegetatively intact."

Zone of Helpfulness -- The zone to which all mental health practitioners should aspire to be in (i.e., neither underinvolved or overinvolved).

Humor -- On a textbook page of therapeutic communication techniques (e.g., active listening, broad openings, restating, theme identification), humor is described as "the discharge of energy through the comic enjoyment of the imperfect." I've never quite thought about it that way!

SPEAKING OF HUMOR

At the beginning of every shift we get a report sheet that contains a brief synopsis, pertinent information, and updates on each patient. After one patient's name, in bold: “Patient needs to wear pants when out of his room.” Ahem. Updates are noted daily and generally include a major treatment change, a discharge plan, etc. A recent update for another patient: "7/30/12: Patient is really a rapper." (Apparently a staff member had confirmed a prior rap career of a patient who claimed as much.)

A nurse told me a story of a former patient who was seen wearing sunglasses out in the Day Area of the unit. She asked him why he was wearing sunglasses. He responded, "Because my future looks bright."

Aaaand I'm out.

holy ***ing **** i'm a nurse: week two

There is something about watching an inspirational video in a drab conference room that makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Especially when said video features still pictures of nature with inspirational words running across them and a soundtrack of "Return to Innocence" by 90's one-hit wonder Enigma.* This experience was foisted upon me the other day during another corporate training and I spent most of the excruciating 4 minutes and 16 seconds picking at my cuticles and wishing my friend E had been sitting next to me so we could poke each other in the ribs and try to maintain straight faces. If you would like to recreate this magical moment for yourself (and I really think you should), just close your eyes . . . imagine you are in an old building in the inner city . . . the walls are beige . . . the chairs hurt your back . . . your business casual outfit restricts your ability to reposition yourself . . . the air conditioner is on a setting that is way too high . . . you have to pee because you've had way too much coffee today . . . the lights dim . . . 

Not the video I watched, but strikingly similar.

Here are some other highlights from Week Two!

1. Part of my training includes reading a whole bunch of hospital Policies and Procedures manuals. They are important and I'm reading them like I'm supposed to, but they are generally not so exciting. There are some hidden gems, however. According to the one for infection prevention and isolation precautions, blowing one’s nose = “managing respiratory secretions with a tissue.” I love hospital speak.

2. Desperately having to urinate/collect myself after watching the aforementioned video, I went into a public bathroom and was delighted to find that of the three stalls, one was empty. And then I realized the door was missing. I was tempted to make like the Chinese and just go, but I was wearing my lab coat and badge and didn't want to appear unprofessional/get in trouble. That's really all there is to the story, and I'm really only telling it so I can post this piss-poor illustration of one of my first public toileting experiences in China (no pun intended . . . okay maybe sort of):

3. On my unit there are many Groups, and they are mostly run by the RNs. Most start with a let's-go-around-the-room-and-share-something icebreaker. As you can probably imagine, when you're doing this multiple times a day, every day, it can be hard to come up with new icebreakers. During Substance Abuse Group this week, the nurse, presumably inspired by the foliage on the patio, spontaneously presented this one: “If you had a yard and could grow any plant in it, and it would grow in copious amounts, what would it be?” Hilarity ensued.

4. There are many reasons why I wanted to work in psych. Here is one. Typical medical/surgical nursing report: “Patient on four liters of oxygen via nasal cannula, has chest tube on the left side to suction with moderate amount of serosanguinous drainage.” Typical psychiatry nursing report: “Watch Patient A with Patient B. Overnight Patient A seen cuddling with Patient B in telephone cubby, and Patient A was really happy about it, if you know what I mean.”

5. Here is another: I had my first near tears experience because a patient’s comments during Substance Abuse Group were so insightful, moving, tragic. His head and his heart were in the right place, but due to a confluence of factors he was standing at the bottom of a very big hill. I wanted to snap my fingers and get him a job and a home and a new family and meaningful activities. But all I can really do at this point is sit there and listen. And hope it works out.

*No offense to Enigma fans out there. I loved that song when I was 12 and a part of me will always love everything I loved when I was 12. Except for Mountain Dew and a certain buck-toothed boy who I had a crush on and who later made fun of the size of my jean shorts because I'd gotten a little fat from being depressed and consuming too much Mountain Dew and low-fat Cool Ranch Pringles. Anyway.

holy ***ing **** i'm a nurse: week one

Oh hey there. It's been awhile. To pick up where we left off . . . I'm officially Nurse Gina now. I got back from China and then a whole bunch of stuff happened and then I got my RN license and an ID badge with letters after my name (and a new pair of Danksos, naturally) and now I have a job on a psychiatric unit where I'm walking around trying to look like I know what I'm doing.

Highlights from Week One:

1. I got through two days of general corporate orientation (i.e., lots and lots of PowerPoint presentations) with only minor back pain that lasted the next two days, and without doing anything unprofessional like passing a note to a friend saying "shoot me now" during a lecture on Professionalism, not that I felt any sort of impulse to do that, or anything.  

2. I ran into friends from nursing school at nursing school during lunch time, even though none of us had any legitimate reason to be at nursing school (and the food is nothing special). We are like little fledglings, not quite ready to fully leave the nest.

3. The first day on my new unit was a success, aside from the part where during morning report my cell phone alarm clock went off, TWICE (I was so mortified the first time it went off that I failed to turn it off and just hit snooze, apparently, as that is what my thumb is most used to doing), and I of course happened to be sitting next to the Nurse Educator and the attending physician.

4. I GET TO WEAR A LAB COAT. I'm sorry, but nothing makes me feel more badass than wearing a lab coat. Okay, maybe wearing OR scrubs. Or Carhartt overalls. Or a spacesuit, presumably, though I imagine you don't feel very badass when you're wearing a spacesuit and you have to pee. 

5. I sat with the patients and ate a banana and a hard-boiled egg (we are encouraged to eat the hospital food with the patients during mealtimes) and introduced myself and started conversations with several of them even though I felt totally awkward and shy. 

6. Guided group stretching time during Fresh Air Break! I love psych.

7. Things said to me today that I enjoyed:

New Coworker: You look a lot like a tech we just hired on [other unit].

Me: Yeah?

New Coworker: Yeah. But she's thicker.

Me: Oh! [nervous laughter]

Me [silently to myself]: I love you.

Patient: Where are you from?

Me: Wisconsin.

Patient: Do they have a lot of murders in Wisconsin?

Me: Oh, uh, I dunno, not that many, I don't think.*

*I do not purport to know anything about the murder statistics in Wisconsin. But something tells me Homicide: Sheboygan would be a lot less interesting than Homicide: Life on the Street, which I only recently learned takes place in good ol' B'more.

8. This newfound Career business has inspired me to live my life with a little more self-discipline. On Monday, I resolved that I would go to two yoga classes per week (at least), and write for 30 minutes a day (at least). I figured these were SMART goals, which in the world of psych nursing means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. I even created a measurement system, with timeframes. It is now Friday. 

Baby steps.

a blog post about yoga

Today in yoga class I did Wheel Pose for the first time ever! Okay, for the first time since, like, 5th grade probably. Anyway, this is what Wheel Pose looks like:

 *Photo selected because it was the first result in a Google Image search. Okay that's a lie. It was the fourth result.

I looked pretty must just like that, minus the, um, bulge.

Okay, that's also a lie. I think I probably looked a little more like this:

But hey. As a 5'10" lady who regularly failed the flexibility portions of the Presidential Fitness Test, I think we can safely say GOLD STAR FOR ME.

And now...

Most Awesome Thing Said by Teacher in Yoga Class Today: "Pull your pelvic floor up to the soft palate in the roof of your mouth to create waves in the cerebrospinal fluid that will lead to happiness."

Most Awesome Thing That Happened in Yoga Class Today: Someone farted real loud and it was not me.

On a Related Note: Raw carrots and hummus is NOT an appropriate pre-yoga snack.

Percentage of Yoga Class Time I Spent Thinking About What I Was Going to Have for Dinner: 82%

welcome home

You know you are back in Baltimore when...

...you have to do a corporate compliance endless online learning module thingy for your job at a city hospital and this is one of your end-of-module multiple-choice quiz questions:

9. Strategies that may improve Patient Satisfaction regarding pain management include the following:
a. Allow patients to purchase street drugs to supplement their pain management plan. 

If only they were joking.

...it is raining and starting to get dark out and you are feeling tired and lazy and want to say screw financial responsibility and take a cab home and there is nothing to be found and you know if you called one it would take longer to get there than it would to walk home so you just walk home and get soaking wet.

...you meet a friend for lunch and have a delicious seafood salad sandwich with Old Bay mayonnaise at an outside table by the water and it smells like oysters down there, in a good way.

...you realize you don't have the key to your bike lock when you get to the restaurant down by the water and are so paranoid someone will steal your bike that you prop the bike next to the fence around the outdoor seating area and make your friend go inside and secure a table before leaving the bike for the 30 seconds it will take to enter the restaurant and make your way to the outdoor seating area.

I realize this is sounding mostly negative, but I'm mostly happy to be back. I missed Baltimore's gritty weirdness (although China was gritty and weird in its own special ways), I had a spontaneous hangout with four friends this afternoon, yesterday my friend found a custom-framed Pearl Jam poster in pristine condition discarded outside in my alleyway and gave it to me (he does not share my appreciation for Eddie Vedder, apparently), and during the car ride back from the airport I saw two people I knew walking down the street (and whom I was too shy to roll down the window and say hi to, of course).

Relatedly, one of my friends has this quote as her G-chat away message and I always pause on it:

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. -- George Moore

I think that's pretty beautiful. I also think that going to the other side of the world served as a reset button for my brain and I'm now able to see and appreciate my home in ways I couldn't before.

bai bai

Today was my last day in Beijing. I did lots of things!

I visited the Great Wall, FINALLY. I had to go to the super touristy restored section, Badaling, because I procrastinated and did not do the adventurous Wall hike/camping trip I had envisioned, and it's the closest part to the city. It was still pretty awesome. There is an ancient cable car system that I became kind of obsessed with and now have dozens of photos and several videos of, Chinese tourists (the bulk of the tourists there) are a real hoot, and, also, it's the Great Freaking Wall. Here is my favorite photo from the trip.

I'm pretty sure this dude's (rather dangerous-looking) job is to clean up the trash that people throw over the side. N.B., not all trash made it over the side, such as the half-eaten chicken foot I also took a photo of.

I also got my last cheapo manicure and decided on a lovely jade color. Of course, I impatiently left the salon before it fully dried and now it's all smudgey, but whatever. Anyway, in addition to the cheapness, I love my nail place because it is in the back of a market full of stalls that sell junk souvenirs and knockoff North Face jackets and because the ladies that work there are SO NICE. They also wear some pretty awesome outfits. The last two times I went, one girl was wearing a t-shirt that said "Cogitation...arrive at beauty...silence." It looked something like this:

And I listened to the same song about 100 times. My unofficial guru of all things cool in Beijing (hi, J) turned me onto this Chinese indie-rock band called Carsick Cars and, because I am really bad about paying attention to song lyrics, I can fall in love with a song while having no clue what it's about. Turns out, it's about cigarettes. Or communism.



According to someone on the internet, the lyrics to "Zhongnanhai" are:

Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai… Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai… I only smoke Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai… I can’t live without Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai… who fucking smoke my Zhongnanhai?

 Zhongnanhai is a brand of cigarettes and also the name of the communist headquarters in Beijing. Carsick Cars opened for Sonic Youth in 2007 and they are young and adorable and you can read more about them here.

What else...I took a nap, had a nice American-ish dinner with my roommate at an outside restaurant at the Westernized Luxury Compound, said goodbye and brought unhealthy snacks (Snickers and Reese's) to the nurses I worked with in the ER, took a stroll under a full moon, and got an hour-long Traditional Chinese Medicine acupressure massage for $20 at 10 p.m. on a Sunday. I leave for the airport in about three hours (it's now 2 a.m.) and I haven't started packing.

I am going to miss this place.

my guru

Oh, Carolyn Hax...I love you so much.

Advice to a lady who wrote in because her friends told her the reason she doesn't have a boyfriend is that she has sex too soon:

[. . .]

So I don’t think the issue here is your jumping into bed — it’s jumping into new men. I.e., it’s not the sex, it’s the hope for romance at breakfast afterward. If you’ve been with a guy for only a few dates or weeks, treating your involvement as a full-blown sexual and emotional commitment confers more status on your relationship than your knowledge of each other is ready to support.

Unfortunately, of the two, behavior is easier to change than expectations are; telling yourself “No sex until we’ve dated X months” and adhering to that isn’t easy, but it’s clear-cut. Telling your enthusiasm and daydreams to sit in a closet till your mutual affection, rapport and trust with a new boyfriend prove worthy of them? That involves the hard work of identifying, and admitting, why you so badly need the validation a "love life" provides.

Repairing the source of the need is the answer here. Then, more fulfilling things will follow, no matter how gaily you kick off your pants.

Amen.

the wild (and not so wild) life of inner mongolia

The wildlife of Inner Mongolia is, let’s say, not the most exotic, but I love me some animals and was excited to get up close and personal with pretty much anything that moved, including what may or may not have been dung beetles. Here is a rundown of my interactions with the Mongol fauna.

Sheep—I mentioned this in my last post so I’ll just go ahead and get it out of the way. On our first night, we got all Anthony Bourdain and asked our guide to arrange for a sheep to be slaughtered for us for dinner. The sheep was retrieved from the field and kept in the back of a pickup truck, along with the bloody, woolly skin of the one that went before him. He was hyperventilating (I assume...I do not claim to know the normal respiratory rate of a year-old male sheep). The slaughter was brutal and the man who did it was kind of scary. We ate the meat for dinner that night. The next day, we were served stewed innards for breakfast. I ate a bowl of rice. With some of the broth, which was, I have to admit, quite tasty.

Horses—For a pittance, we went on an hour-and-a-half-long horseback ride through the grasslands. I galloped for the first time and it was fun and terrifying and I was bouncing all over the place and sustained a giant bruise on my inner ass cheek. Also notable: the alcoholic beverage of choice in Inner Mongolia, aside from warm 3% alcohol beer, is horse milk wine. That is, a 50% alcohol "wine" made from fermented horse milk. We bought the one with the old man's face on it hanging on the bottom right of this photo. We each took a few sips and did not save the rest.

Cows—There were some cows. The most exciting thing about the cows was the fact that Mongolians use their dried poop to make fires for warmth at night. And, lo, a poop stove was assembled inside our yurt just before sundown. They rigged an exhaust pipe going out a hole in the top of the yurt, so, fortunately, we smelled nothing. Quoth my friend, “I’ve never had a shit fire before.”

Camels—Camels! We were all very eager to ride the shaggy, two-humped Mongolian camels. We rode them over the sand dunes in the Gobi Desert, which were pretty and majestic and littered with trash and flanked by power plants. But back to the camels--they were super fun, and felt very safe and comfy because you sit between the two humps. They are gassy mofos. The camel in front of my camel farted pretty much continuously for the first half-hour of our ride. The one behind me was burping. We also went on a midnight camel ride, because it was my friend's birthday and he decided he wanted to go for a midnight camel ride for his birthday. One of the cool things about China--ask for what you want, offer up some money, and you will probably get it. One of the cool things about camels--when you pass by they all turn and stare at you.

Hamster—During our midnight camel ride, a 17-year-old Mongolian fugitive gave me a desert hamster. He had him (or her, I suppose, but my childhood hamster was a him so that’s what I’m calling this one) in a little plastic baggie. I became fixated on the hamster and played with it for a while, and so the 17-year-old Mongolian fugitive offered him to me. And so I had a pet for two hours. I carried him home to our yurt in an Oreo box and set him free when his nocturnal scratching woke up my roommate. I felt bad about releasing him into the unknown, but, as my friend who actually did the deed said, “I put the box on its side and that way he has the choice to stay or go.” He chose to go. I can live with that.

Beetles—I normally hate pretty much all insects, but these little guys were so seemingly harmless and, most importantly, wingless, and they made cool little patterns in the sand.

This one, apparently, had been drinking too much horse milk wine.

Chicks—these are just some regular old baby chickens, but the little peeps they made were so cute I had to capture it on video.

We also saw some captive wolves, one solitary captive deer, a gaggle (or whatever) of ducks, the aforementioned giant Tibetan butt-biting dog, a few lizards, one running rabbit, and, unfortunately, no goats. I really like goats.

6 reasons why it is good to travel with medical professionals

1. Drugs.
If, say, you were a nurse about to go on a four-day trip to rough it in Inner Mongolia with two doctors and two other nurses, and you were to meet them at the hospital at 5:15 in the morning to take a van to the airport, and you hadn't had a bowel movement in a few days and your abdomen was blown up like a balloon and you were worried because you are prone to travel-induced constipation, especially when you go to places where there are no toilets, you could text one of the doctors at 0500 hours about your condition and he could have his on-duty doctor friend put in STAT orders for lactulose (a laxative commonly given to liver-failure patients to make them poop out all their excess ammonia but which works gently and non-gut-spasm-inducingly in healthier folks) and simethicone (aka Gas-X) with the pharmacy, and then one of the nurses who works there could pick it up and hand it to you in time to leave for the airport, and then everyone would know about your condition but you wouldn't feel too embarrassed because, hey, you're all medical professionals. I'm just saying, that could happen.

2. First Aid.
When the driver of your van in Inner Mongolia is bitten on the ass by a roving Tibetan guard dog that looks like a cross between a Saint Bernard and a Rottweiler, your team leader can patch him up (but not his jeans, sadly) and you can all sustain interest in a discussion about the appropriateness and pros and cons of him getting rabies prophylaxis. And also, take pictures.


3. Anatomy Lessons.
You can watch a man slaughter a sheep for your dinner, and, after you--and only you--stop crying (because you are the only one that is crying) you can all marvel at the various stages of processing. Once the guts have been placed into a large metal bowl, you will hear comments such as, "It's still peristalsing!" and, "Is that the omentum? That's not the omentum...it IS the omentum?!" Then, when you get home and write about it on your blog, you will spend thirty minutes deciding whether or not to post one of the photos of the sheep in various stages of processing and ultimately decide against it because you have at least two readers (i.e., half your readership--hi, C.G. and D.S.) who are some degree of vegetarian.

Nota bene: if the two doctors would like to practice performing a cricothyrotomy on the sheep's trachea because apparently sheep tracheas are similar to human tracheas, the two doctors should probably do that pretty soon after the slaughter and you should not offer to keep said fresh trachea wrapped in a plastic bag in your backpack and then forget about it for the next three days.

4. Fun Accessories.
No campsite is complete without a guitar and an intubation kit.*


*Sadly, but practically, this is not actually an intubation kit, but rather a regular ol'--very well stocked--first aid kit. Opportunity for making fun of doctor for over-preparing = lost.

5. Attention.
If you get some teeny tiny splinters in your foot after you step on a desert plant that your Mongolian guide has just told you to make sure not to step on because "it is bad for the skin," and when you put your boots back on and start walking it kind of hurts so you sit down and take off a boot, you will have your entire group upon you before you can say, "I think there's something in my foot." They will then inquire about the status of your foot every four hours for the remainder of the trip, and you will feel loved.

6. Hour-long Conversations About Prostate Exams.

I think this one speaks for itself.

this post has been brought to you by sally struthers

I have realized that it would appear, based on the subject matter of my blog posts, that I have come to China just to screw around. Indeed, I have done a lot of screwing around. But! I've also been putting in an arduous 24 hours a week or so at the hospital (I can finally start an IV with confidence--hooray--and have gotten to work with awesome patients from all over the world), and this week, my roommate and I spent an afternoon at a medical foster home.

What is a medical foster home, you ask? Well. It is unfortunately very common in China for parents to abandon an infant if it has any kind of abnormality. This is because 1., the government limits people to one child, and 2., the healthcare system is f***ed and most people would not be able to afford corrective surgery or treatment. So babies are dumped in orphanages and never registered, and thus the parents can try again.

This awesome nurse lady from Oregon came to China with her husband and her two adopted children five years ago to spend a month volunteering with such babies. They never left. Now they run a home for babies with cardiac defects. They keep the kids healthy with an arsenal of medical supplies, including prescription medications, nebulizers, and a cardiac monitor, advocate for the babies to get needed surgeries and medical care, and get them placed on the national adoption list. They have nannies at the home, one for every two children, 24 hours a day.

This little sweetiepants is deaf and has a colostomy.


They don't know why he has a colostomy, and they can't afford to figure out why. If they could figure out why, maybe it could be repaired and he could be back to soiling diapers like a normal kid. In any case, he was delightful. We played soccer and bumper bikes. The nannies will probably hate me for teaching him bumper bikes.


This compact ray of sunshine has Tetralogy of Fallot, which is basically medicalspeak for four heart defects for the price of one.


Several months ago, she was in heart failure and stayed in the ICU at a "local hospital" (i.e., not the fancy private Westernized one I work at) for four weeks. While she was there she lost five pounds, presumably because she wasn't getting fed enough. When she came back to the foster home, she recoiled from people because in China the nurses are taught not to hold the babies. She has since had surgery and is doing well.

It will be a great feat of willpower if I make it on the plane back to the US without a Chinese baby in my carry-on.

*all photos by my wonderful roommate/classmate

rules rule

Nestled in the natural beauty of Beijing's Central Business District and surrounded by Russian strip clubs, little Ritan Park offers sun and fun for the whole family. That sentence was mostly sarcastic. Sarcasm aside, it is actually quite pretty.

But, there are many things you cannot do in Ritan Park. These include, apparently: biking, picking flowers, sitting with one's legs crossed while leaning backwards slightly, taking a taxi, littering, reclining in a sexy pose, roller skating, playing soccer, GUNS, walking dogs, I have no idea, and starting fires.

Fortunately, public consumption of alcohol is not prohibited, and a little hut on the lake proved a perfect spot for day drinking on one of the first warm and sunny days of the year. And, as I mentioned in my last post, rules in China seem to be made to be broken. Here are two young boys shooting fish with bb guns.

And here is one of my new expat friends demonstrating how one might use a cellphone illegally during a thunderstorm, while drinking.

Last but not least, the park has a PA system, over which a gentle sounding lady voice delivers important announcements in both Mandarin and English. My personal favorite, and one which would be hard to convey with an icon, so it would make sense to be broadcast over a loudspeaker: no "sloppy dress" allowed.

road rules

One of my favorite parts of living in Beijing is getting from point A to point B. No matter which form of transportation you take, it seems there are no rules, and if there are rules, they are meant to be broken, and if you keep your eyes open, you will pretty much always be entertained. Here is my breakdown of the various transportation methods, based on my ample two weeks of experience.

Taxi: Dirt cheap unless you are catching one in the touristy parts of town in which case if you are a white person the driver will refuse to use his meter and will charge you about three times what the actual cost would be, unless, apparently, you pretend to take a picture of his license to indicate you will report him to the authorities, in which case he will turn on his meter as required by law, a little trick of the trade I only learned after the fact. But still, my average cab ride is $2-5, so I ain't complainin'.

Rent a car and driver: I just learned that you can hire someone to take you somewhere, sit around and wait while you do whatever it is you're doing there for as long as you want to do it, and then take you home. For this service, you pay about $10 an hour. Some seemingly average Joes who work for American companies have their own personal, full-time cars with drivers. I cannot wrap my head around this fact.

Walk: A perennial favorite, walking allows one to get some exercise, chat with strangers, see old men out walking their guinea pigs, etc. The only problem with walking in Beijing is that the city is so freaking huge, you can walk for hours and not really get very far. That, and the fact that anything on wheels has the right of way, ALWAYS, and will not stop or even slow down for you. Supposedly, if you don't look the operator of the thing on wheels in the eye, he or she might stop, but I have yet to try this out, for obvious reasons. Also, many streets have so many lanes, getting across them is like playing Frogger. Which is scary but mostly kind of fun.

The bus: There is an obscene number of bus lines, so I haven't tried that one out yet, though some day I just want to get on one and see where it takes me/observe the behavior of fellow passengers, which I can only imagine is an experience in itself (and in unsanitary-ness).

Subway: I hear it's alright, but my apartment, though within the main urban area, is two miles from the nearest station. Have I mentioned how cheap the taxis are?

Bike: I cannot leave this city without riding a bike around, at least a little bit. Everyone rides them, from little kids to little old ladies, during windstorms and in the freezing cold. Pretty badass. No one wears a helmet, but at least there are dedicated bike lanes, complete with their own traffic lights. Of course, said lanes are also used by motorbikes, rickshaws, and the occasional disgruntled taxi driver.

Motorbike/scooter: The best of seemingly all worlds, motoring around Beijing allows one to see the city, avoid traffic, and get places in a reasonable amount of time. You ride in the bike lanes, for the most part, although if you want to get around something, just get right up on the sidewalk, it's no big thing. And in order to make a turn easier, you can just get in a lane going the wrong direction. I am way too scaredypants to drive one myself, but I am okay with hopping on the back of a friend's, closing my eyes periodically, praying to a god I don't believe in, and turning on my video camera*. Sorry, Mom.

*This is my first ever attempt at using iMovie. Move over Tarantino.

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.

potty humor

Some parts of this New York Times article about the dearth of women's toilets in China are pretty hilarious. Like, for example, this part:

A little more than a week ago, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, she and half a dozen other activists commandeered the men’s stalls at a busy public restroom near a park. For three-minute intervals, they warded off the men and invited the women to shorten their waits by using the vacated men’s stalls. Then they waved the men back in for 10 minutes.

The operation, dubbed “Occupy Men’s Toilets,” ended after an hour with, according to Ms. Li, greater public awareness and no trouble.

And this part:

Last November, China hosted the World Toilet Organization’s 11th World Toilet Summit and Expo on Hainan Island. The Chinese authorities there said that the island, a tourist spot, was in the midst of a “toilet revolution.”

But, for someone like me who likes to keep hydrated, the article also kind of terrifying. When I was a dog walker in Manhattan, I knew every easily-accessible toilet on the Upper East Side (if you're on Fifth Avenue, I highly recommend the Guggenheim). And I had a mental map of all the places one could go in Soho during a long day of shopping (Cafe Bari, unfortunately, has turned into a real restaurant and one can no longer sneak down to the basement bathroom without buying anything). But I pretty much avoid Soho now, except to buy Japanese socks and underpants. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, China and peeing. Point is, I am worried and will probably become insanely jealous of toddlers and their split-crotch pants. Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out this video. I recommend watching a bit of the beginning and then skipping to 1:55.

fuck, i'm (not) in my twenties

Wondering...

Is it shameful that I am in my 30s and really, really relating to a Tumblr called "Fuck! I'm in My Twenties"? In any case, I think its creator is pretty darn brilliant. An example:


Another example:

click and it will get bigger! worth it i promise

Yesterday at work, I was sitting at the nurses station with a delightfully brazen 24-year-old nurse. "How old are you?" she asked, out of the blue. "Thirty," I said. Her eyes got all big and she laughed and said "What?!" and "No you're not!" about eight times. "I thought you were like 18." She then asked if I was married, had a fiance, had a boyfriend, had kids, in that order, with increasing incredulousness as I answered "no" to each question. She could not wrap her head around the fact that I was a dinosaur and didn't have any of those things. Her next and final question was, hilariously, "Well then, so do you like drinking?" I was relieved that one of our patients needed our attention at that moment and I didn't have to explain to her that I used to, very much yes, but it hasn't been doing it for me like it did before, the guilt and physical manifestations have started to outweigh the fun, and most of the time it's not even that fun anyway, but I still like one or two beers or glasses of wine at the end of the day, and so, apparently, I am developmentally appropriate in at least one regard.

As nice as it is to know people think I look youthful (at least a dozen people at work have reacted with similar, if more restrained, disbelief upon learning my age), it makes me feel kind of funny. And sad. Because I've been in my 20s, and it was fun and exciting and ridiculous and hard, but I wouldn't go back there if you paid me. And now I feel like I'm in this kind of limbo zone, waiting for my life to catch up to the new creases around my eyes when I smile and the white eyebrow hairs that are appearing with ever increasing frequency. But, maybe it is catching up? And like how people aren't noticing my wrinkles and eyebrows, the changes are too slow and subtle for me to appreciate.

words are like way-upons

Because I don't have several papers to write, jobs to apply for, and a Chinese visa to acquire in DC (*ahem*), today I decided to drive up to Philadelphia to visit a friend and the best museum ever, the Mutter Museum. (I am too lazy to figure out how to make an umlaut on here, but the former German student in me needs to point out that there should be an umlaut over the "u".) I also intended to eat a really good sandwich.


Disturbingly Informative.

The Mutter is dedicated to the history of medicine, with a particular focus on abnormalities, aka Fucked Up Shit. There are casts of faces with giant growths on them, the real corpse of a lady who turned to soap, sections of Albert Einstein's brain, two walls of shelves with deformed fetuses in fomaldehyde-filled jars, and so much more! What I was most excited to see, however, was the megacolon.

You are not supposed to take pictures at the Mutter, but I felt it was worth getting thrown out to take one of the megacolon, even though they sell a better picture in postcard form (which I bought for 40 cents). This poor guy was born with a nervous system abnormality which rendered his colon unable to, well, do its normal functions, and stuff accumulated, and it grew to unfathomable proportions.


I've had an ongoing list of heavy metal band names related to medical terminology. My current faves are Toxic Megacolon, Tenacious Sputum, Weepy Scrotum, and Anasarca.

The other highlight of the visit was getting hit on while looking at the aforementioned shelves of deformed fetuses. While that would be a meet-cute if ever there was one, I responded kindly but did not engage. When he said he wouldn't be able to eat again for a while, I refrained from telling him that I was about to go eat a giant sandwich.


Which brings me to the sandwich! I am usually opposed to waiting in line for anything, unless it's something I've bought a ticket for, but my friend Ellen said this one sandwich at Tommy DiNic's at Reading Market (which, for the Baltimore folks, is the same idea as Lexington Market, minus the crackheads) was "the best sandwich in the world," and, as a long-time sandwich lover, I felt I owed it to myself to have one.

The line was at least 30 people deep, but it moved pretty quickly, and soon I was rewarded with roast pork, sharp provolone, and broccoli rabe on perfectly absorbent Italian bread.


My poor friend was sick and just got a matzoh ball soup :(

Next time (AND THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME), I think I'd hold the cheese, because, while I love cheese (duh), this was real-deal provolone, not the tasteless plasticky stuff, and the sharpness overpowered the pork. And god I love pork.

My day was concluded with a drive down I-95 in my Zipcar. I rarely drive, so when I do I play the radio real loud and it is such a treat. In just 15 minutes, I heard Incubus, Nickleback, and the theme song from The Hills. And then there were non-guilty pleasures like T-Rex and Led Zeppelin. And then, while I entered suburban Baltimore at dusk, the best song of them all came on. Life is alright sometimes.

a very mental health-y valentine's day

I just had what will surely go down in personal history as my most memorable Valentine's Day ever, after that time in early grade school when we all made decorative valentine receptacles out of shoe boxes and went around putting valentines in everyone's box but somehow my box got pushed off to the side and so no one saw mine and I didn't get any valentines.

But I'm over it.

Anyway, at 10 a.m., a dance party commenced at the community mental health agency where I'm doing my public health nursing rotation. A DJ played club music over impressively loud speakers, many clients, including deaf ones, displayed some rather skilled dance moves, and many more watched from folding chairs on the sidelines. One little 50-something man in a scarf and shades kept doing breakdance-y splits, and even though it took him a solid minute to get his aging joints off the floor, he was beaming the whole time.

We nursing students provided the clients with sugar-free Kool-aid (many psych meds cause diabetes, you know!) and materials with which to make valentines.




Some were kind of confusing.



Some were just, well, the best.



And some were just plain sweet.



One guy just wrote his name on his.

I can't say I'd be terribly upset if this holiday just disappeared altogether, but even this old grinch's heart grew a few sizes today.

score!

There is nothing better than having your eye on something you want to buy and then having that thing go drastically on sale. Okay, I suppose there are better things, like achieving world peace, eradicating AIDS, and acquiring a puppy. But I will take victory where I can get it.

I have been kind of obsessed with L.L. Bean's newish "Signature" line since it came out, probably because it allows me to turn into my parents without fully admitting I am turning into my parents. I saw these wonderfully grandpa-ish pants back in November and knew they had to be mine. And then I saw that making them mine would cost me $149, and I remembered that I am trying to be a responsible adult with goals and plans and stuff and restrained myself. And then they went on sale. And then I bought them in two sizes, because sometimes my weight fluctuates and, clearly, I should never be without plaid wool pants in a color and pattern that goes with approximately one shirt in my current wardrobe.

Here is me modeling the pants, using my camera's self-timer feature and some jumping moves I learned from my 10 years of watching America's Next Top Model.













Victory!