A Broken Roommate and a Holiday!

Right now, I'm nearing the end Spirit Week here at school. Today is Fictional Character day and I'm dressed as Mr. Duck... again! In an effort to get all 'caught up,' here's the excitement from two weeks ago:

Ty's Accident

Late one warm spring evening (April 28th to be exact), Ty, Lester (another teacher at my school) and I decided to go on a little bike trip. As we have done before, we decided to play "Rock, Paper, Scissors" at every intersection to let fate decide our destination. In an effort to make it to Lotus (a large grocery store) before it closed, we began biking especially aggressive.

We made it to an exceptionally smooth piece of road and flew under an overpass. That's when it happened. Under the overpass, the light that previously lit the roads was completely block and we could only see the road that exited on the other side. Being in the back of the group- I saw it all take place.

As Ty came into the light, his bike was wobbling a great deal. There came a moment where he almost seemed to have it under control. After that, things went into slow motion. His handle bars jolted perpendicular with the road and he went flying forward. True to instincts, his hands shot forward to brace himself for the fall. As he bounce off the road at high speeds, the bike became tangled in his long legs (Ty stands at a tower 6'4") and his body acted as a catapult, hurling the bike forward as he went into a role.

Ty, covered in dirt, laid on the ground and cradled his right arm. Hidden in the dark was a pile of dirt and a huge tree branch that Ty hit. He was worried that he had broke his wrist and his knees were skinned pretty bad. Lester and I got him to his feet and flagged down a cab. I called Cari and she met him at the apartment. Meanwhile, Lester and I walked back the three bikes. Once we got there, the plans had already been made for Ty's trip to the hospital. Jon, a veteran foreigner here in China, accompanied Ty, Cari and I to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital at about midnight. Although the facilities were slightly below American standards, we didn't have to wait all night just to see the doctor! After about 20 minutes, Ty was already getting an x-ray! At one point in the evening, Ty was being asked questions by the nurse and a man walked in off the street with a bloody hand and shirt splattered with blood. He stood right in front of Ty and held the hand in front of the nurse, as if waiting for a hand shake. The nurse rolled her eyes and began to bandage the hand. Then, the man left. Moments later, a police car arrived and started asking question. During the interruptions, Ty waited patiently holding his arm.


On our way to the exit, the man who had given Ty his x-ray ran up to me and waved me to follow him. We went pass the x-ray machine and to the room where it was controlled. He began to pull something up on his computer and I couldn't help but laugh out loud. To my surprise, he opened a folder labeled "Knight Rider" and smiled as he first seconds of the show began to play (it was the new "Knight Rider"- no Hasselhof!). He was clearly excited to have the opportunity to share his knowledge of American Culture and it was a humorous and strangely appropriate way to wrap-up our interesting evening in a Chinese Hospital.

Ty Update: The doctors said there was no break but placed his arm in a cast and gave him a bunch of medicine, mostly herbal, telling him to return after several days. After a week of rest and painkillers, a foreign doctor who is learning Chinese at the same school as Ty offered to look at the x-rays. He said that the the bone was most-like compacted and that Ty should try to get his arm out of the cast and begin stretching it. Ty has painfully worked through some stretching and is almost back to 100% in less than 3 weeks! Nothing less than a miracle after the fall he took!

May Day

May Day, my first holiday since February, was greatly anticipated throughout the long months of March and April. Ty and I spent our May Day with a couple of good Chinese friends, Joy and Faith. Our first order of business was food. We went to a restaurant named Golden Hans, it was AMAZING! It was an all-you-can-eat buffet with a German theme and it, maybe most important, SALAD BAR. Fresh vegetables are really hard to find here in restaurants in China. It was really good and felt very American (which is a plus at this point in the game). We enjoyed it so much, we've even gone back since to share it with Cari!

After lunch, I experienced another Chinese "first." The four of us went to Chinese movie, in Chinese! I've been to the theaters in Xi'an, but only to watch movies in English. We watched a brand new movie here in China named 南京！南京！:City of Life and Death. It was an intense dramatization of massacre/rape of the city of Nanjing (南京) during the Japanese occupation of China during 1937. Although I understood little of what was said, the acting and directing did a wonderful job telling the story and showing the seriousness and historical importance of this bloody time in Chinese history.

After May Day, the weekened got even more exciting... but that's for the next blog; AMAZING RACE Xi'an! I'll try and get that up this weekend.

Thanks for reading!