A Day in the Life

Time for the promised photo blog. This time, it's a somewhat-typical day based on photos I took over the course of about 24 hours. I have to preface this by saying that I spent a bunch of those 24 hours in my room sleeping this time, owing to a mild case of 拉肚子. (Translation not forthcoming, and I might have my characters wrong.)

Anyway, I think there's enough here to agglomerate a Saturday... I should be doing this again sometime, so I should get good pics of the other stuff as well.

The morning starts at about 6:15, when I wake up. At 6:30, Monday through Friday, there's tinny music being played over the loudspeakers, and people down at the athletic field are jogging or doing calisthenics which are presided over by loudspeaker as well, about ten minutes after the music starts, presumably to let people get there and so on.

As for me, I've started doing some stretches in the morning, or some version of the 气功 (Qigong) 八段锦 (Ba Duan Jin, usually translated as some variant on "Eight Brocades of Silk"). Then a shower, and...

Breakfast of champions! Actually, I had some black sesame porridge along with the pomelo (I ate the whole thing, not just the two pieces you see here.)

This, or something like it, makes up about half my breakfasts. The other half of the time, I get breakfast from a street cart, so it's usually something with eggs, wrapped in bread. Either way, it's pretty decent, and pretty filling.

Then, I walk downstairs, out the door, and next door to the hospital. Say what you like, but the commute ain't bad, even if there are people giving me funny looks because of the 美国人 (Meiguoren, "American") walking into the clinic wearing a lab coat.

So I think I've already reasonably described the experience in clinic, so far. Starting on Monday, things might be different.

This is a picture of me and 王医圣 (Dr. Wang) in the clinic after work on Saturday. One of the patients was particular about dressing the photo with the little bamboo plant that usually hangs out by the sink.

And yes, I've seen other pictures of him, and that IS the smile he uses for photos. In clinic, though, he jokes and laughs and points a lot. He's pretty expressive, even for those of us who have become (in the words of one person I'm corresponding with) instant illiterates.


So the day -- the morning, anyway, but on Saturday, that's the entire work day -- is over, and it's time to go get some lunch. Today, I'm walking across campus to the school gate, where there's a little alleyway with a few street carts. They get a lot of students, and the food is reliably pretty good.

Here's me with one of my fellow interns, whose English was only a little better than my Chinese. Nevertheless, we managed to make plenty of jokes to one another, ask for help when it was needed, and so on. It might have taken a while, but -- especially when the Not-Russians were around -- it was welcome relief.

And this is me with my friend 王婷 (Wang Ting), whose English and my Chinese were just compatible enough that we communicated quite well. She's helped me get around, figure things out in the city, and so on... and encouraged my Chinese, just as I've helped her practice English.

She's thinking about studying abroad, and maybe she'll end up going to the US. She has an uncle in Boston, so if she goes, she'll probably end up going there.

Ting and I share a love of food, so we've had lunch together a few times, and went to dinner (the aforementioned Sichuan place) once. Not today, though... she already had plans once she got home.

Incidentally, the painted and carved rock in the background is pretty typical of the school -- there are about a dozen that I've seen -- and I've seen them also at the main University of Tianjin.

Food now procured, I decide to take the stairs up to my room. I do this probably about three times a day, unless I've got a good reason to take the elevator.

There are really a lot of stairs going up the triangular stairwell. One side has 11 steps, another has seven... and the third side has the door.

Finally made it! So now it's time for a little reward...

Lunch! I've gotten my food and retreated to the comfort of my room, because it's actually a bit blustery and I don't feel like sitting outside. Tea in the blue thing on the right, and the bread is stuffed with grilled veggies (carrots and bean sprouts) and something that looks and tastes like about half of a hot dog, cut up. It's nothing special -- I might even venture to say that it's not really all that tasty. I don't think I'll go back to that cart. But for 4元, I'm not being picky.

A little post-prandial light reading. If it were a weekday, I'd be back in clinic at 2, but today's Saturday, so I'm off to see what else there is to do today.

Maybe I'll take a walk around and see what else is going on before I head to the Internet Cafe and check in with my blog and my e-mail. I like getting e-mail.

Looks like there's a baseball game going on over at the athletic field. Not that you can tell all that well, from this picture -- it's not as if it's a dedicated field or anything. I headed down to watch an inning or two. It wasn't terrible, though the pitching was, so there were lots of walks and passed balls. No chance to turn a double play on defense, since it was almost impossible to keep the runner on first.

Didn't matter anyway. The basic strategic mistakes were too numerous to mention here. I could only stand about an inning before I had to take off.

So, then I walked across campus. It takes up most of the city block -- it's about what you'd expect from a school of several thousand students. But very pretty, in case I haven't mentioned it before.

The center of the campus, shown here, is kind of quiet and open most of the time, except for quittin' time (when it's packed with students) and at night (when there are lots of folks taking advantage of the open area and playing badminton, or rollerblading, or whatever the hell else they do).

Here I'm facing the hotel, which you can see in the distance. I think you can see my room, but you know... it's one of those little squares you see in the right-hand part of the building. Not exactly exciting or anything.

On the way back, I walk past the restaurant that's in the hotel. I still haven't eaten here -- the one time I was going to, it had been booked out for a wedding. That was pretty cool, since there was a massive roar in the neighborhood, and when I went out the front of the hotel, it looked like they'd lit off about fifty pounds of firecrackers. Red paper everywhere.... firecrackers are cool. And common -- every time a new business opens, or a wedding, or sometimes I just think just because it's Tuesday. But these were the kind with sparkly bits of mylar in multiple colors inside, so the paper was pretty to look at. And, because it's China, it got swept up in a couple of hours.

After that, the 拉肚子 had me in its grip, so it was pretty much back to reading and listening to music until I dragged myself out to dinner and went back. Not that I was miserable... I just didn't want to go out and do much. That's not exactly typical for me, but that's the way it was this evening.

I'll leave you with this video. I think it's self-explanatory.