It's hard to believe that I've only been here for two days because so much has already happened. It was so nice staying overnight in Japan - the hotel was wonderful and we had fun going out for dinner downtown. I'm not too terribly jet-lagged, although I've been waking up with the sun at 5:30 every morning. It's nice not having to drag myself out of bed in the morning :) Yesterday, we went for a medical checkup, which was a little crazy. First of all, we weren't allowed to eat anything for breakfast (probably for the ultrasound), and then we had a 2-hour bus trip downtown. We got there at 9:30 and waited in long line-ups for an around-the-world room-to-room checkup. The first one I went to made me lift my shirt and everything else and stuck wires all over my body and pulsed some sort of current through to check my system. It was especially awkward since you could see apartments through the window and there was only a thin sheet separating our room from the line-up waiting outside. Then I had to get two vials of blood removed to check for HIV. Something between the combination of no breakfast, a hot muggy room, and losing blood made me feel really faint afterwards. I'm still bruised from the needles. We also got an ultrasound, vision check, xrays, and had to give a urine sample (in a really dirty room with just a squatty potty). So afterwards when we went shopping, I made up for it and treated myself to everything I need for my apartment (including a toaster oven, DVD and CD player, rice cooker, and pots and pans). Even though restaurant food is incredibly cheap here, I can't wait to be able to cook for myself (my digestive system hasn't quite adjusted to the food here, but then my digestive system has always been a little crazy). I haven't gotten propane for my stove yet and my fridge doesn't work, but I have hope that soon I'll be all set up.
Today, we did a tour of the school and a lot of pro-d. The school is enormous! Right now I'm on the fifth floor of one of the buildings. It's like being on a university campus. The people that I'm working with are great. It really makes it feel like home when you always have someone to speak English with and almost everyone is from Vancouver. I haven't picked up much Chinese yet, but I know thank you, hi, how are you, 1, 2, 3, and cheers! I have no idea whether people can actually understand what I'm saying though :) Tomorrow I'm going to church with two other girls who just graduated from UBC and we'll do some shopping afterwards. I've also been hanging out with some of the other math teachers and since we all live so close together, we see eachother all the time. Now we're going to walk down to the beach, which is just a couple minutes from the school and see what it's like.
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