Running on Empty

Today began as a frustrating day as we were told we needed to be downstairs in the lobby at 8:30am and I rushed down with our bags and was there early and no one was around.  It was enormously irritating as when someone tells us to be somewhere at a certain time, we are there.  Finally 15 minutes later someone came down and said the ambulance was coming back to put our luggage into it and still no one else was there, which seemed strange because we thought the whole group was going on a tour of the University with us.  Apparently, wires crossed again and it was just mom and I and the other doctor and his wife- all of our bags in the ambulance and then we were told to get into two separate cars and we were going to the University.  We got into the car that has been driving us around since we’ve been here- a very nice driver, but his gas tank has been on empty since we’ve driven all around town and our running joke was that we were going to run out of gas every time we got into the car.  We never did run out of gas, but that would have made the trip interesting!

 

A few minutes later we arrived at the University, the entrance was a large archway in Chinese style architecture and many guards that needed permission to let us into the University.  We were given approval to enter and in we went.  There are about 20,000 students at the school and we drove up to the art building first.  We were taken here to see the art show that the people we were with put up and showed yesterday, but was not up anymore because we were all leaving today.  Another wire crossed moment.  Then we ventured in the pouring rain to the Medical School, which was really nice.  When we walked in, the Chinese Hippocratic oath was on display.  Mom asked to see a classroom and we probably would have just seen the lobby had she not said anything.  Then out of no where someone with a camera appeared as has happened everywhere we’ve been.  He must have taken a few hundred photos while we walked around.  We saw a few classrooms and then we went to the top floor to see the Chinese medicine area, which was really neat.  There were so many herbs, animal parts, even semen and a few students examining the specimens.  There must have been over a 1000 bottles and plant species in the room.  We were then taken to a lab on the first floor where they were extracting some of the things from upstairs so that they could test it and use it.  It was very neat.

Hippocratic Oath in a Chinese version talking about supporting the country.

 

 

Then we were rushed out of the school, had a photo taken with everyone, and told we needed to get to the airport by 11am.  Off we went.  When we got to the airport, we couldn’t check-in as the ambulance had not arrived and because the Enshi airport is so small they don’t open until 1.5 hours before a flight.  Our flight was at 12:30pm.  We were told to sit and have some tea, which wasn’t very good (the first time actually we haven’t had good tea).  Finally the ambulance arrived with our luggage- though we thought everyone’s luggage would be in the ambulance, but it was just ours- and we were able to check-in.  We were told that we would be able to check our luggage through to our final destination, but we came to find out that we needed to go to baggage claim in Wuhan (our connecting city), then check-inagain and go to our next flight.  We knew we only had an hour layover, so that would be cutting it close.  We also wanted seats further up on the plane as usual.  This is very hard to communicate in English to people who don’t understand English!  Luckily the people in Enshi payed for all of our overweight bags and then we said goodbye and went through security.  We were told that the rest of the group had already arrived and were waiting for us inside.  When we got inside, there were only 2 gates in this airport and no one that looked like our group.  So we waited for them and waited for them, went to the bathroom, and then it was time to board and they had not appeared yet.  So we boarded the plane, found our seats in the equivalent of the bulkhead and got ready to go.  We thought the others may be on the later flight or that they went on an earlier flight.  As the doors were about to close, the whole art group got onto the plane and actually made the flight.  It was a quick one hour flight and then we were in Wuhan.
In Wuhan we rushed off the plane to get to baggage claim, got our bags pretty quickly, then took the small elevator up to the second floor for departures and tried to find our airline that we were told we were taking for the next leg of our trip.  Finally we found the correct number to check in at and at the point our flight was supposed to board in 30 minutes.  The doctor we were with came with us (his final stop of the day was Wuhan, so we were on our own after that) and he helped translate what we needed to do to the check-in woman.  Finally she understood and checked us in, though she wanted us to site 5 rows apart in middle seats and eventually we convinced her to give us 2 seats closer and an aisle seat and actually when we got onto the plane eventually we switched with someone so we could sit next to each other.  So at the check-in counter the woman figured out how much we were over weight and mom had enough RMB’s to pay as they don’t take credit cards but she had to walk across the terminal area to pay and we couldn’t get our tickets until she did that.  So she ran.  We also had to take our baggage to another area because they were apparently too big to be checked at the main counter.  When mom returned we got our tickets, took our luggage to the other area, and then rushed to the security area.  The line wasn’t too long, so we were able to go through somewhat quickly and then we walked very quickly to our gate.  The door was open and we thought they may be boarding, but in broken English we hear 15 minutes.  Thankfully the flight was a bit late as we were supposed to start boarding 10 minutes before we got there.15 minutes later we boarded the flight, and it was pretty turbulent the whole flight, but an hour and 25 minutes later, we arrived in Chongqing.  Chongqing is a huge city of 30 million people.  A doctor whom mom has been communicating with for sometime now and is here from Columbia just to be here with us and to translate mom’s lectures picked us up at the airport in a large mini van driven by a lovely man. After a little bit, we fit all of the bags in and were driven to the Plaza Hotel (it doesn’t look or feel like the Plaza, but it is nice)- it is located next to the People’s Great Hall which is an unbelievable beautiful round large building.

 

 

The hotel is having a conference so there were no rooms with 2 beds in it.  They showed us a king size room which is large and has a separate seating area and we thought they may be able to bring a cot in as mom wants to sleep by herself tonight because she thinks she will be too anxious to sleep.  They said they had a large bed that wouldn’t fit and finally 20 minutes later a small cot came into the room.  (even though they said they didn’t have one).  It was 6:15pm at this point and we were told we were getting picked up for dinner at 6:30pm and we wanted to shower quickly as flying is dirtying.  So we both took very quick showers and were about to start getting dressed when we heard a knock on the door that was the doctor saying everyone was waiting downstairs.  We rushed and came quickly downstairs from the sixth floor.  There were 4 people waiting for us- the assistant director of the hospital, her secretary, a public health person and the translator the doctor.  We walked about 5 minutes away and entered a restaurant called the Lucky Fish Restaurant.

Our food was the best food we’ve had so far.  They served us a soup with 2 different types of locally caught fish from the Yangtze River.  Actually when we walked into the restaurant a man carrying a large blue water tub came rushing through the restaurant with the live fish.  That was cool.  The people here seem very bright and dinner was nice.

 

 

Right after dinner we walked outside and there was music blaring and people dancing every where in a park across the street.  There were hundreds of people dancing to different types of music, doing tai chi and everything seemed so organized.  It was amazing!  And it was all right in front of the People’s Great Hall (which is where the mayor and local government officials meet and greet and have meetings with dignitaries).  We then came back to the room and mom is very nervous about her lecture tomorrow but I think she will be great!

My phone stopped working again this evening for some reason and I had to spend 1/2 an hour on Skype calling Verizon to fix the data problem.  This is starting to get very frustrating!