It has been a most interesting couple of days. I have been waking up with terrible mosquito bites all over my feet so I was determined to get something to stop them, and to stop the itching. So, naturally, I bought "toilet water." At least this is the only English printed on the bottle. But it's this perfumey type stuff that's supposed to help fight mosquitoes. Why they call it toilet water is beyond me!
I have a Chinese name! My liaison, Grace, gave me one when I signed my contract. She picked LiAn because it sounds similar to my name. I am learning how to write it in Chinese. 'An' means quiet, so I guess it's appropriate. The first syllable is the surname, so some of you might find that funny.
There is a student whose English name is "Dream." (Many students choose their own English names based only on what they think sounds cool, not always knowing the meaning) Dream can speak English marvelously well. Almost better than the Chinese English teachers. She is well known for befriending all the foreign English teachers and knowing many things about what's going on. She gave me a little questionnaire to fill out to know more about me. It's kind of cute, but could also be a little bit of trouble.
Today we finally got paid! It's so nice to actually have some money now. I plan on saving as much as I can. Getting paid is quite the ordeal here. You never know when or if. But PTL, it came!
Well, the biggest news from today is that one of our fellow teacher/friends from our school, Arthur, became very ill this morning and brought himself to the hospital under much pain early this morning. We found out later that he had kidney stones. We spent most of the day at the emergency room trying to get a doctor to see him, trying to figure out what to do. It's not fun at all to be sick and in so much pain in a foreign country. He arrived at 6am and didn't leave til 7pm cause no one knew what to do! It was chaos. We couldn't find doctors, even though we had three translators, the stories were all different and nothing was being done. And since he is a foreigner they think they can charge him an arm and a leg for everything. Poor Arthur. So the next week or so is going to be miserable for him. Since it worked out that I have only 4 classes this entire week I volunteered to take some of his classes. He will have some test done tommorow to confirm the diagnosis, then they will decide what procedure to take. If he has to have surgery... it's not the most pleasant or sanitary thing to do here. Please remember him. He is in a lot of pain.
Today I kind of shut down a bit. I felt helpless at the hospital, I felt others' helplessness, and I can stand only so much bickering and gossiping, and complaining, and swearing, and filthy language from the others. All I knew to do was sit back, observe and talk to Dad quietly about it all.
I am giving you my address in case some would like it and were not able to find it. It is located on the link I gave for the school. But I will also give it here:
No. 2 Middle School
No 134 Minzhi Road, Xiashan District,
Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province, China
Zip Code: 524006
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