What? How do you set your mood as \'Good\'? Is that even a way to describe your mood? Crazy...
Anyway, after a bad day on Saturday (yes, I played Bad Day quite a few times to make me feel better), I was confident that Sunday would be better. I was very bleary-eyed when I woke up (at four in the morning). From my room, I was able to find a wireless network and established Internet connection (albeit a bad one). I signed on to AIM and was bombarded by IMs (some sent from before I left) that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks to all of you for making me feel better even if you guys didn\'t know about my breakdown the night before :)
So I stayed online (or struggled to) until about eight in the morning. Guma #3 woke up around seven as she usually does, but I pretended to be asleep just so I can finish my morning rounds online. Finally, I got tired of losing the battle with my connection and \"woke up\".
Guma #3 took me out to meet Guzhang #1 for breakfast. When she told me that he had gone to the restaurant at 6:30 to claim us a table, I felt so bad. The poor guy has Alzheimers and is going through a rather rough patch with Guma #1 (this is the adultress situation some of you know about. For those who don\'t, I\'ll explain it all later today in a \"Beth\'s Crazy Family\" post).
I brought along a huge bottle of Lethicin for him. I have no clear idea of what Lethicin does. I was under the impression that it was just a healthy supplement, but my mom says Lethicin makes your headache go away (I think it\'s just some sort of a placebo effect), and Guma #3 says it improves brain function. When I Googled it just now, I got some CRAZY answers. So it\'s either good for your eye, does nothing, masks THC in drug screens, and/or makes people floss before bedtime.
Ah well, I\'m sure the Lethicin won\'t kill him. >.>
Anyway, we got to the restaurant around 8:45, and my cousin XiaoBuDian (it\'s just a nickname, but I don\'t know what his real name is >.>) and Shaozi #2 and their child Yu arrived just a little later. Again, what I know about them will be explained later today. We ordered some dishes we wanted and ate our breakfast. I think I\'ll get used to eating huge breakfasts sometime over the next 80 77 days. During breakfast, Guzhang #1 kept saying the same thing over and over again. I felt so bad when everyone at the table chuckled. I admit I kind of snorted into my tea the eighth time he said something my dad eating junk food and still remaining healthy.
I was surprised to see that XiaoBuDian ordered a bottle of beer. Beer in the morning? Hmm... Then he turned around and gave the bottle to four-year-old Yu. While I knew that drinking was a big thing in China, I didn\'t think you could drink at such a young age. Don\'t they know it\'s not healthy? Of course, I didn\'t feel like it was my place to criticize their lifestyle and how they were raising their children, so I didn\'t say anything. But gosh.
When we finished, we went our separate ways. Guma #3 took me to this GIGANTIC bookstore nearby. It had seven freakin\' stories, and there were people everywhere. I was a bit overwhelmed.We asked like five people if the bookstore carried Chinese-English medical dictionaries, and everyone said they didn\'t. And when we ended up finding it on the fifth floor, I was ecstatic. The only problem is, the words are in Chinese characters, not pinyin (pinyin is when you spell out the words phonetically). Only the first word of each medical phrase was in pinyin. I figured I\'d just write what I hear in pinyin on a notepad and bring it home to decipher the meaning with the help of my aunt.
We also headed down to the second floor (Language) to pick up a Chinese-English English-Chinese dictionary so I wouldn\'t struggle so much communicating simple thoughts and ideas (although it didn\'t have the Chinese word for \'jersey\' when I was trying to explain to my aunt that I wanted to get one). We headed across the street to the mall to look for a basketball jersey in the sports department on the fifth floor. I told my aunt it was for my brother, but secretly it was for me (they\'re so comfy, I swear). They didn\'t carry any good ones, so we wandered to an adjoining shop to look at sports equipment. I picked out two badminton rackets, one for me and one for Dad. It was so cheap! About 50 USD for mine and 60 USD for my dad\'s.
I was amused by their warranty policy. Each racket was covered by a three-month warranty, but the warranty did not apply if the string broke, if the handle showed signs of wear-and-tear, if the frame shape warped, or if the paint on the racket peeled. So essentially, the only way I could get my racket replaced was if I snapped it in two.
I also learned from the saleslady that on June 1, China mandated that shoppers must now bring their own bags to store their purchases. No more plastic bags. Guma #3 explained why, but I didn\'t understand her. I\'m pretty sure it\'s an effort to clean the environment/reduce global warming, but the dictionary was useless when I tried to ask.
As they prepared our rackets, Guma #3 and I headed down to the basement level to pick up some groceries. She got some orange juice and coffee for me. She also picked up a carton of milk, which I wasn\'t too pleased about. They put a LOT of preservatives in milk here since not very many Chinese people like putting their milk in the refridgerator. Last time I came here with my brother, we spent about three weeks trying out every milk the stores had in stock to find one we were okay with drinking.
We spent about 15 minutes waiting in line to pay for our groceries. There were SO many people. Joanna told me the day before that there were over 15 million people in Guangzhou alone. Crazy stuff. We lugged our groceries back up to the fifth floor (just kidding. We used the elevator) and picked up my rackets. Then we hailed a taxi and went home for lunch.
I then spent nearly the entire afternoon on the computer. Why were 30 people on my buddy list up at 2 in the morning?! I chatted with a few people for a while before they started to drop like flies xD At around five, Guma #3 woke from her nap and told me that the relative who I was shadowing was coming by to talk to me about my schedule for Monday. We were going to meet her at the apartment complex\'s gym.
When we got down to the gym, I found out that I had to pay 50 yuan (a little more than 9 USD) to use their facilities since I wasn\'t considered a resident. So I told Guma #3 that I didn\'t have to exercise today, not when the price for using the gym was 25 yuan on Mondays through Fridays. I was a little disappointed since I was looking forward to a work-out finally, but I\'m going sometime today anyway, saving my aunt about 5 USD.
Instead, we sat down outside the gym and waited for Gugu to come. I\'ve never met her before, but she was very friendly and nice as she explained the environment I would be thrown into on Monday. I was relieved to hear that the doctors at the hospital could understand English well and was even looking forward to practicing their English on me. Apparently, the doctors here sometimes have to go to English-speaking countries for conferences. What\'s more, they use a lot of Western drugs, so they don\'t have a problem with reading English either.
It took about fifteen minutes to cover what was going to happen on Monday. Essentially, I could wear whatever I want since in the surgery rooms, I have to scrub up anyway. They have scrubs there for me wear, but I could bring my own sandals into the procedure room if I wasn\'t comfortable with their shoes. Sandals in a procedure room?! Ms Pesin and Ms Kacher would have a heart attack if they found out. I was to work from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM and then 3:00 PM to 5:30 PM initially, but as I start rotating department-wise, my hours will change as well. For Monday though, I was to come in only from 9 to 12:30.
She and Guma #3 began gossiping in Cantonese (but I knew they were talking about Guma and Guzhang #1\'s situation) so I began to wander around the facilities. The gym (it\'s actually just a work-out room) has glass walls, so every time I walked by, this one guy there would stop whatever he was doing and just stare at me. I\'m startled by how openly people stare at you around here. I noticed a lot of people just following some white people in our building with their eyes. Scary. So I stopped walking around and just sat down next to my relatives, trying to look as interested as possible in a conversation I couldn\'t understand.
The rest of the day isn\'t worth describing (I ate, I chatted, I washed, and I slept).
But as you can see, I had a good day. It more than made up for yesterday :]
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