Swine Flu!

Everyone in China is a little caught up about the swine flu and it’s kind of understandable after SARS. On the plane I was kind of paranoid because I was coughing up a storm after catching back-to-back colds, the latter from my adorable, yet incredibly infectious nephew.

Airport Scanners

When I arrived at Beijing and walked to the customs area, there was a medical screening area where they had these mounted thermal temperature scanners pointed at the crowd. I guess that whenever there is someone that turns up a bit in the red, they are pulled aside to the curtained medical area right behind. There was another second check where we submitted these forms that had questions like “Have you had contact with anyone with the flu in the past seven days?” and “Have you had contact with pigs?” Um, no.

My Non-Quarantine

I was supposed to be under a “voluntary” seven-day quarantine upon arrival. The other American teachers were pretty limited to the apartment building for a week, but since I arrived a lot later and the threat of swine is a little decreased, I wasn’t really quarantined and just won’t have any classroom contact until Friday. I’m very relieved to not have been!

University Gate Scanners

At the main gate to the university I am at, there are two people there with these temperature scanners. They strangely look like barcode scanners and also make a little ‘beep’ noise once they read your temperature. I tend to make a scrunched up face when they scan me because it freaks me out to have one of those pointed directly at my forehead. It’s really bizarre.

Medical Exam

I had a medical exam yesterday as a prerequisite to apply for the Foreign Expert Certificate (haha, I am an expert at being foreign!!). I had to get a lot of tests done, including an EKG, x-ray, sonogram, blood test, and physical exam. China is really thorough, apparently. So yeah… my first sonogram and first x-ray since they thought I had TB in high school. Weird stuff.

The Swine is an American Conspiracy

Apparently there is a video that is shown on Chinese flights that is basically a little cartoon about the swine. There is a visual showing the virus as arrows emanating from, oh hey, America! Forget Mexico, apparently the Swine was created by the US to take over the world. I can’t wait to see this video.

I start teaching classes this Friday, as in my tomorrow. I have two classes and hopefully have figured out a structure for the class. I got a lot of advice from some of the other teachers and basically get thrown into the fire tomorrow. And by fire, I mean a classroom of 50 Chinese freshmen in a vocational school. More details to come…

Oh and Matt is posting these until I get a proxy figured out. He’s the best, basically.