After wards another round of orientation. This time with a more stressed tone. The head of International education at Beida is a young man in his mid-20's 30's. His presentation have off to us a sense of anxiety, to fear this country, as if we were threatened. He reminded us to essentially "behave ourselves" or else there will be "unnecessary troubles" for us due to the 60th anniversary of the PRC. Don't patronize us. We are students here buddy.
After a CIEE photograph and getting creeped out by sketchy starting at our group we were whisked away to a banquet hosted by Beida. Apparenlty there's international culture week and a speech contest. USA represent. Oh god what culture can we bring to the table? Capitalism?
BY the afternon I was informed Sarah returend from the hospital and when I unlocked my door there she was. Clarissa hugged her close. (Note: Clarissa and Sarah go to Georgetown. We have a lot of G-town and CU kids here)
So how was quarantine? The day before she freaked "They're gonna throw me in a shack aren't they??"
"no no Sarah, they wouldn't do that." I reassured her. Heh. Little did I know what she would have to experience. Get this. You are essentially locked up in a hospital, but it resembles something like a prison. Next time anyone gets sick, we'll just go to United Family.
Here's a bit of Sarah's story.
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Let the stories begin.
Right after I last finished writing, the assistant program director came to get me and bring me to the school hospital. I got there at 9 am; it is now 9 pm and I have been here ever since and won’t leave for at least another twelve hours. FML indeed. The hospital is just a tiny building with a few rooms. Of course the doctors all freaked out thinking I had H1N1 so they did blood tests, which apparently take 24 hours for the results to come back. They can’t allow anyone who’s suspected of swine flu to leave the premises so they stuck me in a room and I’ve been quarantined all day and have to stay the night. Doesn’t sound that bad? Let me describe it to you. I am in a tiny room with a white cot that looks like it’s from an insane asylum in a horror movie, or one of those you see in WWI documentaries. I’m pretty sure they haven’t manufactured these since the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1917. Anyway, the sheets, blanket, pillowcases, are all absolutely filthy. We’re talking visible dirt, dust, and hairs (not mine), and I found a spider crawling on the bed. There are lots of dead cockroaches strewn on the floor, which looks like it hasn’t been mopped since the Qin dynasty. I have to wear a mask all the time and if anyone wants to take throat samples or whatever they have to put on a full quarantine/haz mat suit, which makes them look like an astronaut. No one is allowed to come see me. The walls are bare, white, and peeling. Have I mentioned I haven’t left this hell hole in 12 hours? You really start to feel like you’re going crazy. All I can do is pace. I thought I was fairly good about going with the flow (the flow of going), but I got pretty damn depressed in that cell. There are even bars on the window to keep from escaping. The only time I’m permitted to leave is to use the “bathroom,” aka a hole in the ground. There aren’t any railings or anything to support yourself so my thighs die every single time. It’s not the squatting that’s hard, it’s getting up after you’re done. I try to avoid it as much as possible but I’m getting better at balance and aim. Also, there’s not a drop of soap to be found in this place, and the two sinks are rusty and have dead bugs in them. Jesus Christ. Thank god our dorm rooms have “Western-style” bathrooms. I literally begged the nurses every chance I got to let me go back to my room, but they wouldn’t let me. Luckily CIEE made Sam, the girl who came with me to the hospital, stay with me all day and she’s staying the night too. She could tell I was getting depressed so she even brought her friend in to play the Chinese flute for me. I feel bad because obviously being here sucks for her, but she’s been a good sport. She constantly makes jokes like, oh we’re gonna die in here haha! Or, these are the names of the last victims in this room. I laugh nervously every time. She’s a little older than me and speaks English which is fabulous. None of the doctors or nurses speak a word of English, by the way. Sam (her real name is Jia) acted as my translator, although I’ve been doing better than I thought with my Chinese. I even heard one of the doctors say, “Yeah, she speaks good Chinese.” Obviously that’s not true, but it made me happy. The program director came by awhile ago and at least brought me clean sheets, so I don’t have to sleep in filth. The doors to the building are wide open still so I don’t know if they don’t close or what. About an hour ago a man came in and said he had a headache. I should mention that they left me completely alone in the hospital; there are no nurses or doctors after 5 pm and I’m the only patient. No guards or anything. Well, I told the man this in my broken Chinese and thought he’d go away, but he just kind of stood there so I had the brilliant idea to give him some Motrin from my bag. He said he couldn’t take it without water so I brought him one of my bottles. I’m a regular Flornece Fucking Nightingale. Anyway, as soon as I’d given him the pills, he asked for my phone number. Smooth, buddy. I told him, in all honesty, that I didn’t have a cell phone yet, so he immediately suggested he give me his number. Great. He wrote down both his Chinese and English name. Please guess what his English name was. You get one try. I know Elise has figured it out by now. It was George. He tried to stick around but I was like Hope your head feels better bye! Sam came back soon after that and as I was telling her about it, who should waltz in but George again, holding half of a watermelon. Sam took charge of the situation and was like, who the hell are you and why do you have a watermelon? He said he was a teacher, but we didn’t really believe him. The watermelon was a present for me. Finally he left, hopefully once and for all. Sam tested the watermelon to make sure it wasn’t poisoned (another one of her jokes), and she’s still alive so that’s good. She also said that George could probably chop us into pieces if he wanted to. Haha? I threw his number away, but if anyone wants it I’m sure he would be thrilled. It occurs to me now that I should have pretended not to speak Chinese, and then when he spoke English pretended to only speak Spanish. That will be my new tactic.
All right, I can’t hold out any longer. I’m off to the squat-hole. That will be especially fun at 3 am."
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