I haven’t posted much on here in the last week, and I probably won’t for the next couple either. But let me take a few moments to catch you up on what’s going on over here in Chinars.

My marathon training has come to almost a complete stop. For a while, I was experiencing some foot problems because I didn’t have proper shoes. This last weekend, however, I traveled to Changsha, the provincial captial, and found the only pair of size 45 (U.S. 11) running shoes in Hunan Province. I’m not exagerrating. They don’t fit exactly right (Chinese feet are smaller, as are their shoe designs), but they’re much better than anything else I’ve had … so I think I’m finally good-to-go in that department.

On Sunday morning, however, another major problem arose. I bought some tasty fried street food (not sure what exactly it was) … and about an hour or two later, my world started turning upside down. I started vomiting uncontrollably, getting really weak and dehydrated, and even tingling and losing feeling in parts of my body. Not a good thing. Not a good thing at all.

Luckily, I was at Daisy’s house (she’s a friend from Loudi), so after letting me (unsuccessfully) try to sleep it off, she and her family helped me to get in a cab and go to the hospital. At that point, I was utterly weak, shaking and starting to lose my ability to think clearly. Daisy’s mom was convinced that it was caused by my shorts and t-shirt (Chinese people are obsessed with wearing warm clothes and literally think it causes illness not to) … but I knew otherwise.

My program director, Daniel, showed up at the hospital in the nick of time, helping me to secure a bed and (with the help of a retired doctor he happened to be with) scooting me back into a hospital room. And by “hospital room”, I mean a 20′ by 30′ waiting room with two dozen people sitting in hard seats with IV’s plugged into their bodies. I stayed in that room for the next 10 or 11 hours, letting nurses repeatedly shoot me in the buttcheek, run 17 tests on me, and hook me up to a steady stream of IV medication (10 bags in all). It was an absolutely surreal experience!

Believe me, that was a really long story short … I’ll have to type more about the Chinese medical system later.

The good thing, however, was that when my principal found out about my illness, he decreed that I should have the entire week off! So I’ve been home in Loudi for the past couple of days, doing some much-needed catch-up on emails, cleaning my apartment in preparation for my parents’ visit, and making some travel plans for Beijing next week. I still have a nasty chest cough, but that should be gone in a day or two.

So tomorrow I’m off to Beijing! It should be a grand adventure … I’m excited to welcome Mom and Dad Webel to The Middle Country, introducing them to the world I’ve been living in for the past 8 months. We’ll spend 5-6 days in Beijing (Great Wall, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, T-square, etc.) then take a train down to Yueyang to visit my cousins for a couple of days. After a potential visit to Changsha, we’ll head back to Loudi for a week in the life of Lance.

How exciting is that?

Posted to webeldotnet on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 1:24 am EST in Stories & China & My Life & Family (comment feed). If you refer to this post on your blog, please trackback. Thanks!