Oh what a beautiful morning!

Since my traveler's visa expired last Saturday, I decided it was high time to make myself legal. A young woman working in the International Office went as my translator to get the physical required for a worker's visa. She insisted we go to the clinic at 7:15, which was great because then we got to sit around for 45 minutes until it opened. Eventually I spoke (avec translator) with a receptionist, who yelled at me for having the wrong size photos and not having a Chinese translation of my name before sending me (and translator, who had also taken on the position of "stuff holder") to cubicle #1 where I was asked for my height and weight, which I do not know in metric, and which took long enough for me to figure out that a crowd of people, next in line to give their stats, started to gather outside the door. Mid-calculation, my phone rings.

"Hi! Hello! This is ChineseNameIdontknow of the Mathematics school. Someone is here from your university. Can you come to meeting now?"
"Now? Um, I knew he was going to be here this week, but I wasn't told when, and I'm kind of busy. I'm at the hospital--"
"Hospital?"
"No no, clinic for my visa."
"Well at 10:00 he has to meet with SomeoneIdon'tknow and then this afternoon he has to give a lecture, so I don't know when..."
"I'm sorry, can I call you back?" Great.

Ignoring the call for now, I was sent to a new room, where a woman glanced up, looked over at a blood pressure machine (like the one at the grocery store) and told me to go at it.
Next back to the reception area, where I was yelled at again for my photos and told it was time to pay for the physical. So I stood in line to get my receipt, took it to the cashier's office, and stood in line to pay my 50 USD.

"Is that it?" I asked my new best friend/translator/stuff carrier.

"Um, haha, no."

Back in the reception room, I was directed to another cubicle, where I find an overweight, surprisingly hairy Chinese man pulling his shirt down and sitting up on a hospital table, which was covered in "distressed" towels in lieu of a nice sanitary piece of wax paper. Once he left I was told to hop on up, and my top half was doused in... water I think? which came out of a scary looking jar and was applied with an... old...bristly... wand thing. It wasn't until two of the EKG suction cups were placed on my nipples that I thought, "this is SO going in my blog."

Then I went upstairs and had blood drawn in the stinkiest room in all of China. Why so smelly? Oh, I don't know, maybe because 60 blood and urine samples were sitting there in open test tubes on the counter. No lids, just chillin' right next to my arm, which is starting to turn purple and tingle from the strangling rubber tube the nurse had tightly tied around it. As the woman haphazardly draws blood from my arm, glancing anxiously at her blinking cell phone, I can't help but think how much it would suck if she accidentally puts an air bubble in my vein or uses an infected needle and I die, and how the last bit of air I breathe will be heavy and putrid and gross.

Fortunately I didn't die or spill any test tubes and next came my ultrasound. The woman who did it yelled at us because we interrupted her game of Spider Solitaire. srsly. Good news: Not pregnant! With my shirt clinging to the ultra-ooze left on my stomach, I made my way down to the x-ray room, then to the eye examination room. As I read the lines off the wall (E... A, M, F... R, V, T, Q...), each letter was translated into Chinese, which cracked me up. Finally came my last run-in with the receptionist, who told me that I would have to come back on Friday and bring larger photos.

"No problem!" I told her.