Saturday May 5, 2012

After a fabulous dance concert on Friday night—brava Elinor and crew for “Awakenings”—we got up Saturday morning to finalize preparation. This meant some packing, some hunting—where is that piano music?—and a lot of hugging and tears.  Julia attended Olivia’s birthday party as part of the last minute plans! Which was a fun way for her to ‘go out.’ Then Dad, Julia and I headed off for Detroit while Maggie, Elinor, Abe and Nana and Pa headed for Elinor’s soccer game (end result: a 10—1 victory!). It was a tearful parting; Elinor’s mentality has spread!

After we got through our first security check (there were MANY security checks in the next 24 hours), we waved good bye to Dad, and found the gate for the plane from Detroit to LA. And waited for 2 ½ hours! The cost of being early!

Julia watching the planes as we wait for our flight

All of our flying went well and easily, even though it was a LONG time. We were lucky not to have a 3rd person in our row to LA—5 hours. So Julia got to watch the takeoff. And then she slept for 3 hours; good for her! We landed in LA at 10 pm and left there 2 hours later, with a plane full of Koreans heading home. The flight from LAX to Seoul was 13 hours. The stewardesses were so kind and young! 21 years old of average. With lovely hair buns and identical uniforms. A different concept of service! They fed us as soon as possible and then turned the lights off and induced 10 hours of sleep for many customers!

Julia and I were in the middle 4 seats of a giant airplane, and the lady on one aisle very pleasantly switched with Julia because the arm rests between us didn’t come up (not a good design!) Julia ate well cooked spaghetti at what was 2 am South Bend time. And promptly fell asleep for a solid 4 hours. Only a child could have slept so well in the contorted way she was sitting! When she woke, we had about 5 hours to occupy. We watched a truly stupid movie “We bought a Zoo.” I cannot imagine what possessed Matt Damon or Scarlett Johansson to make that movie!

Julia staying occupied on the LONG plane ride!

Landed in Seoul at 4 am, everything completely closed, in a beautiful airport. Couldn’t get online which was frustrating since everyone at home should have been accessible. Finally, with 40 minutes until loading, the free wifi café opened and I was able to reach Joe and the kids; that felt really good! To talk with them and share that we had done well so far.

What a cheerful traveller!

We had a short flight into Qingdao, and Julia slept part of that flight as well. So it seemed like she would be well rested enough to visit the school that afternoon.

The process of leaving the airport was very easy—it is surprising how easy the whole trip was. No customs, only one scary Chinese official looking over the papers. And we were met by Megan Li who drove us the 40 minutes to the apartment.

Apartments are arranged in ‘communities’ of buildings which have shops and restaurants connected to them. Ours is medium sized, probably 30-40 buildings, about 6 stories high, with a small lake right outside our building. We are on the 4th floor (no elevator of course; think of Angel Mae for all those Shirley Hughes lovers!), so the view of the lake is nice. Lots of trees and other plantings around the buildings. Outside another window is a ‘mountain’—certainly by Indiana standards! The hills and mountains in China have a sharp up and down feel to them. And that this one is so close to the sea strikes my Midwest geography as strange and beautiful. But there is no doubt we are in a city, and one that is under constant, massive, and widespread construction. The whole city, with the exception of the center city, feels torn up, a bit disheveled, and a strange combination of old, crumbling, concrete-based block buildings next to new, tall, glass and steel architecture. The culture is standing in two different eras simultaneously.

Our apt is large, with a nice king sized bed for joint sleeping; there never was any doubt we’d share a bed! It has three balconies! And a large, curved window in the living room that looks out on the lake; very pretty. It also comes with a baby grand piano! It also has a minimum of furniture (no eating table for instance), so it has a different feel than home. However, we’ve already made a Playmobil set-up, to give the space that familiar look!

A view from the van ride

We cleaned up a smitch and went right down to the school at noon, to have lunch with Julia’s new class and then spend the afternoon getting to know the building and the people. Julia slowly got more and more tired; apparently all the sleep on planes didn’t fully tide her over until night time! She jumped right into a science lesson on electricity and shocked me by raising her hand to answer a question! But she came out of the Chinese lesson unhappy. There is going to be more adjustment here than maybe I have given thought to. This is really a very big change for Julia, one she didn’t ‘choose’ and a lot of unfamiliarity for her to deal with. Easy for me to say that ‘it will be ok;’ she’s the one who has to spend the day with a (small) group of kids she doesn’t know and a completely new teacher and set of learning expectations, rules, and approaches. Ms. Jenny is very low key, easy going, pleasant in manner, and also young and approachable—a lot like Mrs. Jones of Marquette Room 208! Still, a big undertaking for a cautious and sometimes anxious little girl.

And one who turns out to have a raging fever and an ‘acute’ throat. Poor baby. We went to school on day two, Tuesday, and had a regular day, including the hot lunch which has yet to catch Julia’s interest! And she threw in the towel at about 2pm. At that point, I realized that the complaints of a sore throat might not be due just to lots of airplane airconditioning. And that the feverish feeling of the night might be a fever. We consulted with the unbelievably kind, helpful, sympathetic and useful staff, who recommended that we go to the Hospital to the Pediatric Clinic. At the mention of the word, Julia became increasingly upset! Climaxing with the mention of ‘shot.’ The staff sent us off in a taxi with a TA to act as translator. We spent the next 3 hours at the hospital, and, for $75.00, got seen, tested, and treated. It was a strange but not unpleasant experience. Of course I worried, worst case scenario, that there would be something tainted in the medicine. After all, I partake of the main stream media!

First we had to pay to register as a patient! I was asked if I wanted the ‘regular’ doctor or the ‘expert’ doctor. Opted for expert, of course. So we were sent down the hall to room #3 where a doctor was seated at a simple metal desk, with computer. He looked up from his reading as we entered, gestured us to a seat, asked a few questions, including how much Julia weighs (I don’t know!), and ordered a blood test. He was an older man, and might have looked stern, but he was pleasant and smiling and totally responded to the aide’s request to be gentle with a scared little girl.

This isn't Julia, but it gives you a feel for what our hospital experience looked like

Back down the hall to first pay for the blood test—52.50 rmb—and then to step to the next window to have the blood drawn (shrieks of concern from Julia). All this in a bare, old, down-at-the-heels hallway. Only minimal concern for sterility. Off to the waiting room, but not for long as the blood test was read in TEN minutes! Unbelievable; so far, we’ve been in the building for 20 minutes, registered, seen the doctor, had a blood test. Amazing. The doctor reads the blood test, uses the word ‘acute,’ asks me if we want the one day medication treatment or the two day; urges the two day for an ‘acute’ throat, mentions ‘antibiotics’ but also ‘virus.’ What does she have? I have no idea. The lovely young woman translating has good English, but the medical terms are out of her depth. We opt of course for two days (what does this mean? We’ll find out), and, fingers crossed, go to pay for the medicine at the same pay window. We are dispensed 4 IV bags and 8 small bottles of ‘stuff.’ Plus a box with a dropper and bottle of something or other. Crazy!

We go off to the nurses’ station at this point. I use station reservedly. There were certainly nurses there, dressed like nurses in 50s Hollywood movies. And they were very competent about hitting a vein with a needle. It was a professional operation. Conducted in what looked like an area furnished with 30 year old items. A torn pad for the child to stretch out her arm, a bare wooden counter, a piece of smooth wood on which strips of anchoring tape were lined up. Old metal chairs for patients to sit in. Nothing even remotely sterile or clean or scrubbed about the whole setup. And located within inches of the constantly opening door through which dust and dirt and germs were constantly entering. Weird! Unreal feeling!. And what was the procedure? The nurse was inserting an IV drip to get the medicine to her system ‘faster;’ this was an utterly common practice. There were 30 IV chairs (old, stained, rusted metal chairs) lined up in front of a flat screen tv on which were playing cartoons (we saw some Chinese Thomas the Train!) where a stream of children sat with IVs. Is this some innovative, cutting edge treatment the Chinese use? Or their best effort to compensate for ‘weak’ meds that don’t really do the job? I have no idea! Clearly they have been doing this for a while though, based on the evidence of the chairs etc. And two days: that meant we had an hour worth of drip on Tuesday and a return on Wednesday for a second hour’s worth of drip! Jokes on me!

This is a healthy Julia on her second day of treatment

Julia fell instantly asleep on my lap for that first hour of drip, while the aide tried to find some food that tired and sick westerners would eat, and get some back up help—she hadn’t signed up for an extra 3 hour after work duty! The principal of the school arrived at 7 as the procedure was finishing, with 3 bags of groceries to get us started (my game plan had been to go grocery shopping after school! Best laid plans of mice and men)—what a life saver in so many ways! He shepherded us home in a taxi, where we went straight to bed with no food for the second consecutive day—mama’s going to lose weight in China! Julia’s fever peaked and broke at 2 am, thank goodness, and we got up for some water and a nutella sandwich. We were lucky enough to catch our family home and awake, and skyped both Maggie in Champaign and the other three in South Bend—what century am I living in right now?! So that helped to make Julia feel better about being alive.

Wednesday was necessarily a quiet day, with more sleep, some welcome food (bowls of pasta and sauce for breakfast; more thanks to the principal!), some Playmobil, reading, a shower, etc. We actually listened to a Cubs game on MLB, just as though we were sitting in South Bend! And had a long skype with the family again, 8 am our time, 8pm their time. It’s good to see faces. At night, when I chat with home, I can tune into WVPE and the whole morning NPR schtick that is a central sound track of my ordinary life; weird and funny and comforting. So far I can check into the 3 or 4 news sites that I regularly check, but no Youtube, no social media. I’d like to watch some Montessori videos, but alas they are blocked. But not the Daily Kos; go figure!

Playing with Playmobile and feeling better on Wednesday

We had some shopping experiences today; more on that to follow.