These last few days have been interesting learning experiences yet again. Yesterday (Thursday), was Medical Day! We had to get up and be at the school by 6:30 a.m. to get bussed around town in order to get our exams: chest x-ray, blood work, blood type, and eye. Those of you who've ever recieved medical care in any forgeign country know that it will always be an experence all its own...this was no exception. There were many odd and out-of the-ordinary aspects. First-men and women entered the hospital through sepearte entrances. Second- when you enter the hospital, you have to punch the little machine to get a NUMBER. Both the machine and ticket looked exactly like they do at the DMV! Even better, the first number it punched out for our group was 4062! Needless to say, it was gonna be a while; but then our angel of a security guard who met us at the door realized who we were and began to expidite the process, MUCH to the other waiting women's chagrin. (And we wonder why some don't like us....hmmmmm) Third- we had to hand over our passports to our two guides while we were there. This helped speed up the process, but it was still unnerving. There were also colored arrows on the floor to direct traffic like cattle to either exam (yellow), chest x-ray (green), or blood work (red)- I kinda found that funny. As we went through the process, it went pretty quickly. I just felt bad that we didn't have to wait and other people did; one woman was actually heard griping in Arabic with a few "America"s mixed in. From the hospital clinic, we drove to another clinic just to get our fingers pricked so they could run our blood types (I know...don't ask). A simple prick, no biggie. We go into the small building to find a men's waiting room to the right and a women's to the left. :) It was just us so we all stayed together. I wouldn't bother sharing this but I couldn't resist telling you that when it was my turn for the finger prick, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I already had my blood drawn and I was done being poked. So I go in and remind myself that I'm being silly. I'm waiting for the lady to take out the little plastic punchy-thing that you can barely feel but what she actually brought out was about a 4 in. long, bringht, shiny needle! Out of the corner of my eye, I see her flick this thing up and then flick it back down so fast and hard that I jumped-actually jumped a few inches out of the chair. Not so much the pain as it was the sheer velocity of the needle that got me. Goooood times. Our last stop was a (get ready Alias fans) super-swank eye glasses store for our eye exams. These consisted of us reading four letters forward with the right eye and backward with our left eye...very thorough.
It was a long but great day at school after that. I finally got to see my classroom, which looks great, and meet one of the other 5th grade teachers, Chad. My friend Katie and I drove home and after being there for a while, I decided I wasn't feeling up to going to the dinner that was being hosted for us that night. Everyone else left though so I was just gonna chill. In the midst of chillin, all of the sudden I hear a loud ringing-exactly like an old-school hallway bell- from the hallway. Turns out, the fire alarm is going off! Now, I had just cooked something in the kitchen and our stove has an on/off switch so I immediately panic. My Mountain View peeps know exactly why this is but for those of you who don't yet know, I kinda set off the school fire alarm one day by accident while toasting my pita bread :) Thankfully, the kitchen was fine, so I run to get my flip flops and go down the 3 floors to the parking garage. By this time, it's been a while so I was very surprised not to see anyone in the parking garage! So I go in to the lobby, see that the alarm was triggered from the 6th floor, and go back out to finally see two whole people waiting around. Turns out, these alarms are quite common but, and I quote, "most of the time" just false. Awesome. However my favorite part was finding out that the one time they had a real fire last year, the trucks couldn't fit all the way into the parking garage and so when they tried to get the hoses upstairs to the fire, it wouldn't reach. Again...awesome.
The day before some friends and I went on a shopping excursion to a store a lot like Pier One. All we had to do was pull out onto the main road for a while and go around the corner to the entrance of the mall. The mall is easy to find, but the entrance is an underground parking garage around the corner. We shop and all is good, but when we went to leave, my trusty navigation partner and I kinda left from the wrong entrance. This mall takes up about half a sqaure city block so leaving from the wrong exit can screw ya up big time. And it did. Needless to say, after a few turns and stops a red light (have I mentioned they're all on average 4 minutes long?), we finally realize where we are because we see our school on the right! The school isn't too far from the apartment but it's definitely much farther away than the mall, so we were waaaay off.
Today, I got to sleep in (Yup! Finally slept through the call to prayer!) a little, because Friday is the start to the weekend here, and do some more shopping. It's amazing how clear the roads are on the Holy Day. I'm going to stop and take a video the next time I'm at this mall, because at Coldstone, there were 4 guys lined up in a row at the counter mixing, flipping, and tossing their ice cream mixes before serving..it was like flare bartending for the ice cream world! It was fabulous! I was able to buy New Moon at the Virgin Superstore so I'm gonna go watch it now-woo hoo! Love y'all!
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