China or Bust!!!: Day 4...Did I mention it's a little warm here?

In order for today's blog to be sufficient, you need to know where I am right now, so please allow me to paint a picture for you....

After a pretty full day of "stuff" I decided to walk to a park near the school with another new teacher. We were warned we should go straight home because of the heat, but we were like, "nahhh, we'll be fine!" She might be fine. Me...I'm not so sure.

I got us both back to our apartment "community" you might say; that part was easy. I got to my area first and pointed her in the direction she needed to go. I thought I was fine!!!! At this point I'm absolutely exhausted, walking at a snails pace, feeling the back of my legs frying and wearing 2 toned clothes. One tone, the color they should be, the other, much more prominent tone, the color the were from my sweat. I was drenched!!! And I can tell you, this is not a typical occurrence for me unless I'm actually doing some kind of physical exercise. I could feel my face almost pulsing with heat, my head was killing me, definitely not enough food and water today. All in all, I was in rough shape.

As I basically staggered back to what I thought was my apartment building I realized....hold up! This is not where I live!!! I mean, I was definitely in the vicinity; I'd absolutely walked where I was walking before, but I had no clue how to get to my building from there!!! Finally, I popped into a dentist office that had....thank God....air conditioning. The girl was extremely nice, not great English but waaaay better than my pathetic Chinese. I showed her my address and while she sought help, she sat me down, gave me a glass of water and told me to wait for a few minutes. She could clearly see I was in rough shape as well. :( They pointed me in the correct direction (I had gone just one street too far) and I found my place quickly then.

I had my mind made up.....the second I walked into the apartment I was going to get a big glass of water and take a cold shower. So I did that, got all ready for my shower, turned the water on and it trickled out until there was no water left to trickle. I tried the sink...nothing. Went to the other bathroom.....trickle, trickle, trickle...nothing. Kitchen....not even a trickle. Apparently the main water line to Vanke phase 1 (the part of the community I live in) burst! :)

I tell you all of this first because I want you to know, I'm sitting on my couch...filthy dirty with dry salty sweat, head feeling not quite right, and I am...blogging. :)

Rewind 9.5 hours......this morning 3 other new teachers and I were taken to an international medical facility close to downtown Wuxi. Today was health screening day! None of us really knew what that entailed, but we weren't allowed any food or drink this morning so that made me pretty curious since really the only other time I can remember doing that is for a procedure! Anyway, after we were registered and ready to go they herded us upstairs and asked us to go into the "locker rooms" to change. Not our clothes....just our shoes. :) We had to put slippers on.

Once we were properly clothed for our medical exam, they started ushering us into one room after another to get to work. I thought they were going to ask me a few questions, check my blood pressure, blah blah blah. Nope! They started by taking 4 viles of blood with a much larger needle than I recall them using at home. Then I had an ultra sound of my entire abdomen, she went over the ribs and all! New experience. She didn't care too much about how neat she was about it because I left that room with that nasty jelly all over my shirt. (That ones for you Suzette :) I had an eye exam, a pathetic pathetic exam from the ENT, an X-Ray, urine sample, etc. The best though...was the EKG. I just walked into the room and she asked me to lay down on the bed (same paper was on the bed as they guy who literally walked out right as I walked in). She asked me to lift my shirt up so I did, then said, "no, the bra". So...we got really close really fast. :)

All in all, the exam was a piece of cake, but I certainly have a new appreciation for exam robes, fresh linens, you know...the works. :)

After the medical exams we headed to the phone store to get those sorted out, and then we were in need of food! We landed at a Chinese restaurant that the Chinese Admin. Assistant deemed safe. She had to go, but she helped us order first. We weren't necessarily feeling adventurous, it was only about 10:30am at this point. So one British lady ordered a blueberry muffin which was a waffle with a blueberry sauce, some whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top. :) The rest of us ordered potato pancakes, thinking they sounded harmless. She got her "muffin" and about 45 minutes later we finally got our potato pancakes which were essentially a homemade hashbrown with SPRINKLES on top! Lesson learned.

After our less than satisfying meal we headed back to school, met some new teachers and I checked out my classroom again. It's soooooo different than what I'm used to, but for my teacher friends, this photo kind of speaks for itself.

This is about 3/4 of the classroom. It's HUGE!!!

When we were finished at school Kayla and I headed to the park...where my story begins. I won't go into too much detail but I'll tell you it was about a 3 minute walk from school and it was beautiful! We only walked through a small area; I'm excited to explore around a little more.