Cultural Musing

   The end of the semester is finally here, as in I'm already done with finals and just kinda moseying around until travel time. It was an odd mix of feelings: thank god I'm not doing Chinese four hours a day every day coupled with people leaving. My closest friend left bright and early this morning, and a few others are already out of Beijing, not to return until fate decides. I suppose that right now I'm wanting to be all introspective and recall my entire semester in some hopeful and mature fashion, much akin to J.D. at the end of every Scrubs episode, but I'm resisting this urge right now to talk about something much more interesting, my trip to a Chinese hospital.
    Beijing is this up and coming city, with new building popping up every week and the standard of living going up with them. Tsinghua is one, if not the, top school in China, so when I walk into the hospital here on campus and feel like I just stepped into a B movie horror set, I was feeling less than thrilled. Luckily we had a translator with us, so my extent of being able to express my temperature and if I was allergic to anything was thankfully not tested(we don't learn too much "I'm about to die" words in Chinese, they're fairly optimistic it seems). Though they did want to take my temperature and I started to wonder what method was going to be used. Thankfully they had learned that armpits are a good source for 發燒 measurements, and so I sat in an empty room with hooks above every chair and a distinctive "I haven't been cleaned since you were born" feel to it for ten minutes. The only upside to this was the nurses giggling at my 16 year old license and asking me various questions about it in Chinese. After this I was sent to have a blood test(trying reading the results of one that's only in Chinese) and then given some different antibiotics and some special tea. As I looked at how many pills I was taking a day, twelve to be exact, I realized that they were nuking my body and hoping for the best. Though I am feeling better now, so maybe I'm one of the few who actually survive the horror movie.(P.S. they never told me what I had, I self diagnosed myself with Strep and the antibiotics seemed to be geared toward it).
   In other news, nothing really has happened. I'm ready to come home I think. As wonderful as an experience as it has been here, there's so much I can do back home that I cannot here. Maybe if China catches up with the idea of suburbs it would be more enjoyable. Though I must say, Beijing is unlike any city I've ever dreamed of. There are times when I feel like I'm back home, on some stretch of rode lined by trees and no tall buildings around. But then the metro loudly goes by and ruins that illusion. It is interesting though, the city is not a city founded of skyscrapers and clogged up roads, but rather a collection of areas that all happen to be connected through five massive roads and the subway. The whole city is dotted with massive parks, every road lined with plant life, and there is really not too much in the way of futuristic architecture of technology. To me, used to seeing movies of New York, Seattle, or London, this city is more like hundreds of huge suburbs than an actual thriving international city. It just happens to have terrible pollution and a general lack of cleanliness as well as the country's government is seated here. I will both miss it here and talk about it's flaws. I will dream about a time of taxi's and subways, and also say that driving yourself is the only way to go. But more of that later.