The past two weeks have been quite eventful. I went to the island of Jeju in South Korea for another ultimate tournament. I went to the hospital, I’ve been going to work and just been hanging out with awesome people.
First up: Jeju
The name of this tournament was the Gnarly Nines, which means that each time has only 9 members; which also means that each team only has 2 subs for the entire weekend. We arrived into Jeju on Friday and immediately my lungs opened and I actually found it hard to breathe. It was almost as it my lungs were to happy or surprised to be inhaling such fresh air that it started to feel like heaving. We walked around the “town”, ate some nasty ol’ kimchee and some cold noodles and then some of us went to the beach. It was beautiful and it was cool to finally see a real beach and to just throw the Frisbee around. We got back to the hotel mingled with the other ultimate players and then headed to “bed”. My room didn’t have any beds; we were given comforters and fancy rugs to sleep on. First class all the way BABY!!!
The next morning we finally saw the famous Jeju fields. These fields are used by professional soccer players and are used in the World Cup. I have never seen or felt grass like this in my life. I immediately dove into the grass and fell in love. There were no patches, and the grass was just beautiful. Playing was awesome because it was so refreshing to play against people from Japan, South Korea, Guam, and other areas. I love playing against quality strangers because it greatly helps me to improve. My team, the evil HUWA, played hard, but the competition was just too strong for us. That night we attended the ultimate party where the theme was Rubik’s cube. I idea was to wear 6 different colored (red, green, blue, yellow, white, and orange) pieces of clothing and to by the end of the night be in one single color. Now the only way of achieving this is to trade and swap items of clothing. This helps people to meet new people by trading clothes and in a sense strip. Now the idea isn’t to strip, but to meet new people and to have fun. It was a great night and it was crazy to see how some people turned out.
The next day, the evil HUWA only played 2 days because of the brackets, but it was fun to watch HUWA make it to the finals, but sadly lose to a strong Korean team. On a good note, both shanghai teams were in the top 8 out of about 22 teams. Bucuo!
We were highly blessed with awesome weather and it seemed only fitting that we should experience the famous Jeju weather of torrential downpour and howling winds on the day that we were supposed to arrive back home to Shanghai. So because of the weather, we spent a good 7 hours in the Jeju airport, which meant more picture taking and more time seeing the reactions of people when they see foreigners. It will never get old! There is definitely more to the trip, but I can’t recall all of it because I was stupid and didn’t write this earlier. So enjoy the pictures and just copy and paste the links into a browser:
About two weeks ago from today I was playing ultimate and I laid out (I dove parallel to the ground in order to catch the Frisbee). Laying out is an art form and I am proud to say that I look awesome doing so, but this has also led to many scrapes, scars and now injury. I recall feeling a lot of pain in the right shoulder as I landed and not being able to lift my arm the next day. I played in Jeju with this injury because I thought it was only a bruise.
My friend Sunny accompanied me to the hospital because I don’t speak Chinese. After getting lost for about 20 minutes we finally saw the huge sign that read FUDANUNIVERSITYHOSPITAL and went inside. It was chaos in a building. Chinese people seem to love this idea of IV’s. When they get sick they don’t go and buy medicine or rest, they go to the hospital, sit in a chair or a gurney and then have someone stab an IV into their hand, which supposedly contains medicine and that’s it. So directly in the entrance to the hospital are these little hubs of IV’s and people being fed this liquid. Weird. We wander a bit trying to find the foreigner section until a security points us towards the sign that reads: TOILET. Nice. We head towards the TOILET and find the elevator, go to the foreigner level and they tell us that I have to pay 500 kuai. Tai gui le (too expensive). Sunny leads me back downstairs and she starts talking to the reception counter (one of about 30) and I only now have to pay 120 kuai. What a sweet deal. I take a number and immediately feel like I’m at the deli and I’m just waiting to get my roast beef. I see the doctor, explain to Sunny who explains to the doctor what happened. It’s crazy because total strangers are allowed to just walk in on the patients and just start asking doctors stuff and check out what’s going on with me. There is no sense of privacy or manners in this place and it was really driving me crazy. The gives me a new number to get my x-ray. X-rays are taken and we see the doctor again and he immediately goes, “WOAH!” not a good sign. He tells Sunny who tells me that I have a separated shoulder ligament and that I need to rest it and sling it for at least 3 weeks. So that’s the bad news, but the good news is that I finally went to the hospital. Traveling abroad or working abroad in my mind is all about experiences. Going to the hospital is definitely at the top of list, but the diagnosis is definitely at the bottom.
No comments:
Post a Comment