SNAFU number one

On a project of this kind, there are apt to be multiple SNAFUs.  One occurred a week ago Friday, when I received an urgent email from one of our Chinese partners.  Wanted to know if I and my group could document recent examinations of our lungs and livers, since some of our work in Jinan will be with small children.  Otherwise, said the partner, we could have these tests done in China.

I didn't want to subject our students to the joys of a Chinese physical, but there's no way around it, since time is short, the tests are expensive, and their probably insurance won't cover it.

I'd been through one of these checkups in 2006.  It is a co-ed procedure where everyone is lined up and ordered to strip to the waist.  I'm not a modesty freak, but the procedure exceeded my threshold, especially when people stared curiously at my uncovered breasts, which are quite a bit larger than those of a Chinese woman.

The blood test was quick and efficient. I'm OK with needles; but all they gave us to stanch the bleeding were Q-tips, and I bled like a pig.  No one else did this.  Presumably, the Chinese stop bleeding when ordered to do so.

My doctor's office squeezed me into the schedule, and I had my tests run on Tuesday.

Expert orientation

Tomorrow, I head to China once more, this time as leader of a study abroad program with four education students. John, my former graduate assistant, was recently hired as an instructor and serves our project coordinator.

We will be following the same itinerary as our group did in March, but we're spending just over a month.  First stop is Beijing, where we'll be climbing the Great Wall and experiencing a bit of China's historic culture. Afterwards, we go on to Jinan where we'll do some teaching at Shandong Institute of Commerce and Technology.  We'll finish up with a trip to the beach in Weihai.

There was a week long seminar before we pushed off.  On Thursday, four of our visiting scholars attended the class and gave us pointers on Chinese customs and culture.