Money Matters

Thank you all for your wishes of speedy recovery. I guess they worked since Matt is now out of the hospital and back at his own house, which is a relief for all of us. He was supposed to get out yesterday afternoon, but there were more money problems and he ended up having to stay another night until it was all worked out. The problem was, his insurance company faxed over the guarantee of payment and it asked if the hospital wanted a check or money order for payment and the hospital is only equipped to handle cash transactions. China seems so developed sometimes and then you run into problems like this and you remember what shambles their financial system is in right now and that they still have a ways to go. This is one of the best hospitals in Sichuan and our bill was upwards of 40,000 yuan and it still can only take cash. Luckily, the school was able to authorize payment (in cash) to the hospital, Matt's family will wire money to reimburse the school and then hopefully file a claim to get reimbursed from the insurance company. But at least he's out and on the way to recovery. However, unfortunately he will not be able to accompany Laura, Carly and I to Xinjiang this break. His doctors think it would be a bad idea because if it got infected there is nothing he could do in Xinjiang. He is inclined to listen to them and will be giving his ticket to Ben, another classmate who wanted to go but didn't know if the money would work out.
Yesterday my bike was stolen as well from outside the soccer field where we play rugby. There have been alot of bikes stolen recently because it is spring and I guess I just wasn't careful enough. Now I will always keep it where someone is watching it. Anyways, Laura and I went back to the stolen bike market today and bought a bike. It was, if possible, even more sketchy this time. We were approached right away by a guy who asked if we wanted to buy bicycles. After we said yes he lead us behind a building and through multiple back alleys and finally though a locked door where there were 5 or 6 nicer bikes set up. I told him that these bikes were too expensive and I just wanted to spend 100 kuai. So then another guy went out to find me a 100 kuai bicycle. It looked a little bit like my old bike, but is orange and has the word "GBBDP" - Laura and I think it stands for "Got Bike at Back Door Place". I still haven't thought of a name though. We got them to throw in a lock as well and then they convinced me to by another lock to put on the front wheel as well because that would make it harder to steal. I thought, they would know, and it was only 8 kuai so now I have two locks as well.
Other than that, it has been raining alot here. On Tuesday we went to quiz night again and Matt played from the hospital. We got 3rd place, which was pretty exciting.
But mostly I'm just excited to go to Xinjiang on Sunday!

The Broken Arm

So this blog has a crazy title, but a lot has happened so let's start at the beginning. Saturday Huangjie and I went to a new museum that just opened up in Chengdu called JinSha. It is in northwest Chengdu and is the second archaeological site of an ancient civilization that has just been discovered on the banks of the Yangtze called the “SanXinDui” culture that is supposedly related to the Shu. The new culture is named after the first site that was discovered a few years ago not far from Chengdu. It is well known for large bronze and gold masks that are distinct to the culture. The museum was set in a little park and was very well done, and very Chinese. It had one building that was like a lot of the museums in Xian, where you could see the excavation site. The other museum was of all the things that had been dug out of the holes. One of the most amazing things was a solid gold disks that had four cut out birds around and sun in the middle. It is called "Sun Immortal Bird" and is representative of the importance of the sun in their culture. Some other really amazing artifacts were a beautiful gold crown , lots of carved jade and bronze things, some pretty rocks, and pottery. My favorite was elephant tusks that they found at the site as well which were huge and very impressive. I just love elephants and it makes you think about how much larger of a spread animals used to have in this world since there are definitely not elephants in Sichuan anymore and have not been for a very long time. They also found preserved wood in the ground that was 3000-10000 years old. It had all these little holes in it, but other than that just looked like really dense drift wood. They dug up some of the pieces and made this little "forest" thing that was really cool. After touring the museums we walked through the garden and I found another 4 leaf clover! I guess I just wasn't looking hard enough before. Then Huangjie took me out to lunch at a "bone soup" place that was actually really good. We got one that was like tomato soup with some little veggies in it and big shoulder socket bones. We also ordered this corn and egg thing that is fried and really crispy and light and looks like a wreath that I thought was really interesting. After that we went swimming then I went home. On Saturday night I met up with Mike and Dave again at the Sultan, which is this Middle Eastern restaurant a Pakistani guy I know named Jimmy owns to see a Turkish DJ and belly dancers. There weren’t really belly dancers, but another of my friends taught me how a little and it was really fun. Mike and Dave were leaving the next day for the next leg of their journey to Hong Kong and then back to the States. Sunday I went to play rugby as always. We got to the field at 1pm and after some drills split into guys and girls so we could practice playing as individual teams. At about 2pm we see a few of the guys run across our field back to where everyone's stuff is and we look over the field the men were playing on and everyone has stopped and gathered in a circle. I hear someone say "someone's hurt" and I look over and it's Matt. A minute later two guys are helping Matt walk back over to the bench and it is obvious Matt has broken both the bones in his right forearm (his arm is bent in a way that bones don't typically bend and it has broken the skin). Garth, who has a car, drives Matt, Eoin (an Irish guy that was the guy tackling Matt when it happened) and Xiao Mei (a Chinese girl going to translate) to Huaxi hospital and we all don't really know what to do, so we keep playing. After another hour we finish practice and I hop in the first car going back. On the way back we stopped at this guy Mike's factory. He is in China helping set up a factory to make MRI machines so we saw them making and testing the first MRI machine ever made in China and I learned how MRI's really work, which was very interesting. However, I was really worried about Matt this whole time and I just wanted to get to the hospital and make sure he was going to be OK. I finally got there and Matt was in a room on a bed and X-Rays had been taken (which they had to wait an hour for to be developed), but nothing besides that had happened. The arm was still in a cardboard sling that a guy on our team had put on when it first happened. By this time it was probably about 4:30 already. In the next hour three different doctors came by to look at it. The first doctor took off the sling and looked at the arm and the X-Rays then put it back on and went away. Then the next one came and took off the sling and looked at it with some nurses and then without putting anything back on just walked away. So I am standing there holding Matt because it really hurts and I don't want him to look down at his arm which has the forearm part hanging alot lower than the hand which he is holding with his other hand. It feels like we are waiting forever like this (maybe a few minutes in reality, but WAY TOO LONG) until someone finally comes back and they wrap it up again. Then the last doctor comes and says that he is just going to set it in a cast for now and then Matt will need surgery to re-set the bones in about a week. By this time many more people have arrived, one of them being a Western doctor who a guy from the rugby team brought over to help out. The Western doctor says "no, this surgery should happen now" and goes to talk to the doctors. We find out the whole reason they want to wait is so they can make sure that we pay before they perform the surgery, they essentially won't do anything until we pay them upfront. So I call Matt's mom (in the middle of the night in Seattle) and get Matt's insurance information and we try to get that rolling and decided we will do whatever it takes to have the surgery happen now. In the end it turns out the Western doctor convinced them that money would not be a problem and by calling the insurance company we were able to open a case as well, so at 7pm Matt finally went into surgery. It took 3 hours to finish and they screwed a metal plate to each of his bones to stabilize them. After the surgery I felt alot better, but it was just a very scary, stressful experience because you felt like you couldn't trust anything the doctors were telling you. Thank god the Western doctor came to help, but he left again after like an hour so we were on our own again (Andrea being the next most qualified person to make decisions). The level of care was just so much lower than anything you would ever receive in the States and whenever you tried to ask anyone a question they would never give you an answer. Like when we tried to ask how long Matt's surgery would take, they just said when it's done you'll know, which was the kind of responses we were getting all night. But after the surgery was done and we were back upstairs in a recovery room (with a few other patients too of course) I felt alot better because at least the break was secured now and I felt like the hard part was over. Andrea stayed the night with Matt and I got home at like 12:45am or so. The next day, Monday, after class I went right back to the hospital with some things for Matt, like movies, his computer, etc. Surgery in China is not like in the States and we had no idea how long he would have to stay there, so we were preparing for the long haul. When I got there that afternoon Matt was looking alot better, but very uncomfortable because his arm hurt alot and was swelling like MAD and they also had to put in a catheter. I stayed with Matt all afternoon. We had to have someone with him all the time because, aside from the fact that he doesn't speak Chinese and it's good to have moral support, in China it is BYO nurse. So while I was there I was in charge of alerting the nurse attending to our room when his IV was getting low and emptying the catheter every two hours. I also keep asking every doctor that came around (all two of them) if the swelling was normal because the wrapping seemed really tight and when we could take out the catheter and of course getting no answers. Matt asked me to take that picture of his arm, he has wanted me to document this for some reason. That evening I was relived and left for our customary UW meeting and to get dinner and then went back to stay the night. By the time I got back we had gotten the catheter out and the bandages changed (and loosened) so Matt was in much higher spirits. Plus he was finally sleeping, which was really good. He slept alot of the night, but unfortunately I did not. That's OK though, I didn't really expect to. I did homework and read and we watched a movie, "Time Bandits". Andrea came to relieve me at 7:30 so I could go to class. I just got home and ate lunch and now, although I am exhausted, I can't sleep. But I am laying in my bed as I write this and will hopefully try to get some rest, or at least go to sleep early tonight. I know I will crash at some point. We also just found out the Matt will be getting out of the hospital tomorrow, which is great. He has been so brave and great through this whole thing, I am so proud of him. It's scary enough to have this happen to you in the states and I remember how much it sucks. Having it happen in China I can't even imagine. Anyways, it has been an intense few days but it seems as though we are out of the woods. That's all for now, I'm going to try and get some sleep and I'll talk to you later. Bye .

......craziness........

Summer has arrived in Chengdu and it is hot! On the plus side it has been clear and sunny as well, which more than makes up for the 27 (80) degree days and humidity. I'm just worried about it getting worse (i.e. hotter), but hopefully that won't happen for a while. And I went swimming on Wednesday which felt wonderful. People are already starting to talk about my dark skin because pale skin is the fashion here and my skin tans so fast. All the girls walk around with these weird visors and sun umbrellas, plus they are still wearing long sleeves. It's crazy!
I've been really busy since I got back from Xi'an too, compounded by the fact that Huangjie keeps inviting me to do all this stuff and I've started to feel bad about refusing all the time (the Minnesotan in me, or maybe just the people-pleaser). I made it through the week though (YAY!) and today i just got back from teaching again in Deyang. I decided that because last time's lesson went so well, I didn't have that much time to prepare, and they told me I would be teaching all new students I would just teach pretty much the same class. With the exception of singing "Old McDonald had a farm" because it uses our animal vocabulary. It was going really well until I get to the last class of the day and I realize that I have already taught this class, last time. I think the school just told me I would be teaching all new classes every time because that was the easiest answer and now I know not to trust a word they say. I tried to bide time while in my head scrambling for what I was going to teach them and in the end just decided to alter the lesson with as much new material as possible and say we were "reviewing". So we reviewed animals, sang Old McDonald, and then played animal BINGO (again), but all told I think it went OK. The students all seemed to have fun.
Another highlight of the week was going to buy tickets for the May holiday to Xinjiang. Laura, Matt, a girl from my Chinese class named Carly, and I, and possibly Ben are all going to Xinjiang for the "Labor Day" holiday coming up the first week of May (soon!). They ended up being a little more expensive than we expected, but I am so excited to have them and I have heard Xinjiang is such an amazing, different place I am sure it will be worth it in the end. For those of you who are not familiar with Xinjiang, it is the often down-played Northwestern-most Province in China that is inhabited in large part by the Uighur nationality. The Uighur's are a Muslim people who in actuality are more like Middle Easterners than the Han Chinese, they speak their own language, which is most similar to Turkish, and they have tall noses and generally more Western-looking features. Xinjiang , literally translated as "New Frontier", is also known in China for having the same separatist tendencies as Tibet and Xinjiang-Beijing/Uighur-Han ties are very tenuous. Uighur people living in Xinjiang often refuse to learn or speak Mandarin as a symbol against Han Chinese oppression. Xinjiang, geographically, is a large desert with small oasis towns scattered throughout, congregating mostly along the former "Silk Road" that runs through the Southern part.
That's all I can think of to write about for now. I am going to a museum that just opened with Huangjie tomorrow, but we are going to be back in the afternoon to go swimming and then I should get to go home pretty early, so hopefully I will get some things done tomorrow evening. Tonight didn't work out because after dinner of HotPot (why people eat this on a hot day I will never figure out) Huangjie and her friend wanted to take me to this coffee shop that their friend opened last year. I had some things I wanted to get done tonight and I was kind of tired so I tried my best to say "I'm really tired," "We have to get up early tomorrow," "I still have some things to do tonight," and anything else I could think of to politely excuse myself. Huangjie's response was "We'll just go for a little bit" and "you can rest there." I stopped short of straight up saying "I don't want to go, I want to go home" because I just felt like it was too impolite, but maybe it's not because she definitely didn't take the hint. But, as usual, although I didn't really want to go I ended up having a great time and am glad that I went in the end. The friend wasn't there, but her husband was. The friend went to Italy to be a tour guide for 10 years after graduating from college and then came back to China a few years ago. Last year she and her husband opened this little coffee shop which was really cute and the coffee was imported from Italy, so of course it was delicious. He also gave us popcorn (which is common at coffee shops and they are actually starting to go together in my head, which I thought would never happen) and a homemade Italian-style lemon alcohol, which was sweet but also pretty good. If you are wondering, my Chinese friends didn't like coffee. Huangjie gave me hers and the other friend drank hers with lots of sugar to be polite.