Eileen's Version of Hospital Visit

Wednesday, July 30
We went to the Shenzhen Port Hospital today to get physicals for our one year work visas. Quite the process. The hospital is an older building with older equipment. We had to register and have our picture taken. We were given a form for all the various technicians and nurses to sign off or complete. We had to go from room to room to do each part. We gave the worker our paperwork with our barcode on it. They entered our number and up popped our registration form with our picture. The nurses were in pink uniforms with caps. For the EKG they had us lie down and they put a solution on our chests and ankles and then put big clamps on our ankles and big suction tubes on our chest. The dental and ear examiners were totally bored. They barely looked at our ears and mouth and just signed the paper. The chest ex-ray was visible on the computer instantly and the technician was able to sign off on it right away. The urine sample was the most interesting. They gave us a flimsy plastic ¼ cup measuring cup with no lid, just a little plastic piece to hold onto. Then we had to go into a restroom with a squat pot that was not very clean. That was not a pleasant experience. We left the sample on an open tray in the hallway outside the restroom. No chance of any mix ups! However, everything was quick and simple. All 11 of us were done in one hour.

We ended up going to IKEA and got a lot of stuff for the apt. The most interesting thing was the taxi ride. We got into a taxi behind another family. We showed our driver the address in Chinese and then asked him to follow the other driver. He was really annoyed by that. He went his own way. He honked the whole way…he honked to tell drivers to move over, he honked to cut people off, he honked the second the light turned green, honk, honk, honk. We got there 15 minutes ahead of our friends. However, we ended up paying 40.70 Yuan (about $6.00) and they paid 37.00. On the way home our driver went the longer route and we paid 47.00.

I discovered when I got home that we had purchased the wrong kind of bedding. I thought I was getting a comforter and sheets separately. What I actually got after opening both packages was a duvet cover with 4 shams in both packages. The description said cover on one and you really could not tell by looking at the picture.