My first night in the country was spent in hospital. Sorry, no plane crash. What actually happened was that as you pass through customs, you fill out a slip out a slip about having cold like symptoms, or having been in contact with someone who displayed those sort of symptoms. Seeing as I had a fairly mild cold, I didn't think it would hurt to, you know, answer truthfully. Yes, I did have a runny nose and a sore throat.
So I got separated from the rest, sat down in a cordoned off area and asked a bunch of questions about the cold and any medications I was on. Now they took a sample off the back of my throat... but apparently testing for swine flu takes 6-8 hours - so what was to be done with me and the other 3 people who were all apparently even healthier that I was? After waiting about an hour, we were bundled into the back of an ambulance (which drove in a pretty similar fashion to a taxi, that is, too fast and all too often into oncoming traffic). My kidneys took a pounding from some random object that dug in every time the ambulance bounced.
Anyway, got to the hospital and we were put into separate rooms, everyone on their own. It was actually quite comfortable in that I was in a quiet room, with air conditioning and four beds to choose from. Having not slept the night previous, I got down to making some Z's. They woke me at 12 midnight to inform me that, indeed, I did not have swine flu and that I could leave now or in the morning. Didn't have anywhere else to stay, so I waited till the morning. Except that when I was supposed to leave, they changed their mind. Another test was to be done. About another 6-8 hours later, and I was released. To escorted off the hospital, there was a guard who must have thought "looking surly" was an integral part of the job. Hell, I'm no hospital security guard. Maybe it is! Who am I to tell this guy how to do his job...?
Getting a taxi to the Uni was no problem, the taxi driver bemused by my attempts at conversation and subsequent worried faces as he gave more in-depth replies than my vocabulary allowed for.
Can I just say this one thing? The maps of Chuanda (university nickname of sorts...) available online are crap. There's a fairly passable mud-map available, but what I don't understand is that I've found a much better map on campus. Now, obviously this means there are better maps available. Why aren't they online? It's not like it'd be hard. I took a photo with my camera, but obviously that's not exactly a perfect solution.
Note: See the very furthest upper right building? That's my dorm. Not close to anywhere. By a long way.
This is about the most I can write in one sitting these days, so I'll continue later and get everything up to date!
And so begins a blog about about living in Chengdu.
jiayou, will be following this
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