The Health Check

The first couple of days here were filled with orientation and getting settled. One thing that is required for all foreigners is proper residency papers. In order to get these you have to register at the local police station and have a health check.

Patrick and I went to get our health check one morning. This wasn't a good day for me. I was having some pains in my stomach and side. I knew it was just a problem with my gall bladder since I'd had these pains for a while every couple months. It wasn't very bad this day as I was able to stand and walk for the most part.

During the health check you have to have a chest X-ray, blood work, EKG, vision check, urine test, and an ultrasound. Well, during the ultrasound the lady looked at me with a worried look. She asked me if I spoke English then she proceeded to tell me that I had a gall stone. Great. Just super. I told her to wait a moment and brought my manager, Tommy, into the room. It was what she had told me, I had a rock in my gall bladder.

After a couple of days I got word that there was a problem with my test results. I just thought, "Great, I have AIDS or SARS or something horrible like that." It was said with such urgency and importance that I could swear they were going to tell me that I was dieing. Well, that was not the case. My white blood cell count was really high. Okay, okay, I have an infection. Let's just go the the hospital and I can get one of those truly amazing IV cocktails (those really do seem to work for everything). No, it can't be that easy. Michael, the school's owner, decided that he wanted to take me to his family doctor. Now, that is usually all well and good, but his family doctor practices traditional Chinese medicine.

A couple days later I was picked up by Michael and driven to the doctor. We walk into this large building selling herbs and natural pills. It looked more like a health food store than a doctors' office. We pay a couple RMB and go into a hallway where there are a bunch of old Chinese doctors sitting in cubicles. There weren't exam tables or curtains or doors or anything. Just doctors sitting at desks with a chair for the patient next to the desk. Micheal told the doctor what was wrong with me. The doctor checked my pulse on both of my wrists (as though it would be different or something) then felt my stomach. There was some discussion about me in Chinese and, as is the norm, a small crowd formed. (I get looks quite often but imagine being the only white person in a traditional Chinese doctor's office with no doors or curtains. Everyone wanted to know what was wrong with this strange pale person.) After a couple of minutes we thanked the doctor and went back into the medicine room. We got a bunch of boxes of meds and Michael explained to me how to take them. One was a bunch of little tiny balls that I had to take with hot water. The other was regular pills that I had to take 6 of 3 times a day.

I asked Tommy the next day what the doctor said was wrong with me (as Michael doesn't speak much English). Come to find out my lunar is too high. That's right. My solar is too low and is being thrown off by my high lunar. Because of this I am sick and must avoid cold foods such as bananas. Instead I should eat warm foods like lamb and apples. I still don't know what a warm food is and what a cold food is but I do know to stay away from bananas.

After all this I got my blood checked again and it was off again. So I am now on some Western medicine. We will see how this works and try the test again. And probably again and again.

Arrival in Dalian

We arrived in Dalian and were greeted at the airport by our manager and a Chinese teacher who had gorgeous flowers for me. We were taken to a great dinner and shown our apartment, which is magnificent.

Everything here is amazing. We get free lunch at school everyday whether we are working or not. I have a personal locking desk at the school. We are about one mile from the beach.

Our amazing apartment:

• hardwood floors
• mattresses that aren't just blocks of Styrofoam
• new bed sheets that are clean
• tons of closet space
• a dresser in my bedroom
• a vanity in my bedroom
• wireless Internet
• desktop computer
• a toaster
• a coffee maker
• coffee bean grinder
• tea kettle
• dishes
• eating utensils
• towels
• soap
• toothpaste
• some food for our apartment
• personal heaters for the winter
• extra comforters
• a bathtub! (very rare in China)
• a huge mirror in the living room
• large bedrooms
• a large television
• huge stereo with extra speakers
• satellite TV complete with HBO, BBC, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, and more!

The Visa Story

During our stay in Xuzhou we met some great people and some not so great as can be expected. One of the "not so great" people was our boss. This is a franchise school and the owner, You Kai, treats the school as a business and seems to forget that it is a school. Naturally, Aston is a business first and a school second. For You Kai, the school is a business first, second, third, forth, and so on. He regards the school as a school maybe twentieth (that's being generous). Patrick and I had been sucking up to him from day one. We knew that he was hard up for teachers and he would constantly tell us what great teachers we were. As is the custom in China when trying to impress someone during a meeting, You Kai practically shoved cigarettes down our throats one after the other. We never signed our contracts with him because we could be disciplined for breach of contract but because there wasn't a precedence You Kai could not be disciplined in any way for breach of contract. After numerous meetings with this man it became apparent that we were being blackmailed. During a private meeting with You Kai, Patrick and I made a supplemental contract that was signed by You Kai, Patrick, the interpreter, and myself. This contract stated that we would receive bonuses if we broke our future contract with our Dalian school and stayed at his school. We would also receive bonuses if we recommended our friends to work for Xuzhou Aston and they signed on. I can deal with bribery. It's not that bad, especially in this case. The main part of the contract was that he had to provide us with Z (work) visas before our contract ended on August 31. If proper visas and paperwork were not secured by this date, You Kai would pay any expenses related to getting a proper visa which included travel expenses to Hong Kong or Seoul, visa processing fees, and food and lodging while waiting for a visa among other things. We felt a bit relieved after having this contract written and signed. Although we were working illegally on a visa with a fast approaching expiration date, we would get a proper visa in some way. With that in mind we bought plane tickets to Dalian for September 3. The day after our contract expired we had another meeting with You Kai. We were hoping that it would be about our visas since we had not heard about the progress of our paperwork. You Kai suddenly decided to tell us that we had to sign a contract with him in order for the government to finish our visas. Here we were the day after the end of our contracts with no passports and no visas being blackmailed for our passports! We immediately got on the phone with corporate Aston in Dalian about this matter. We had been talking with numerous people in corporate about our visas and other problems with this school for quite a while. Corporate immediately began calling all their contacts, including the U.S. Embassy. We told You Kai that we would discuss the matter the next day after speaking to Dalian and giving them some time to work on the situation. At this point I was ready to head back to the States. If Dalian couldn't help us with this (because of the Olympics it is very difficult to get a tourist visa transferred to a work visa) I would rather go home than to work for a person like You Kai. No matter what he bribed me with to stay I would more than likely go home. Corporate Aston worked on getting us our visas until at least 11:00 pm when we got a call that we had a few options. We could sign a new contract in Xuzhou and stay there, we could go back to the States and either stay there or come back after securing a work visa, or we could enroll as students at one of the universities in Dalian and work with a student visa. We were instructed to go to our meeting with You Kai the next day and ask for our passports back and leave. When we got to the meeting on the 2nd You Kai said he didn't have our passports; they were at the visa office waiting for a contract with Xuzhou Aston before they could be stamped with the government seal. We told him that we needed our passports because we are leaving on the third for Dalian. We told him that Dalian had figured out a way to get us a visa and he literally laughed in our faces. After about an hour and many calls to Dalian from both Patrick and You Kai, You Kai walked back in the office and simply said, "Okay." He shook our hands, gave us our Foreign Expert Certificates, and invited us to dinner at "the best restaurant in Xuzhou." (I do have to admit it was an amazing dinner. If you can find "dragon fruit", splurge and get some, it's amazing.) The next day we had some bags mailed to Dalian and received our passports including our work visas! That evening we were driven to the airport (which is about an hour out of town) by You Kai's personal driver.

A few hours later we were in Dalian.