Sick and lonely 4/20/08

20 April 2008

My belly did not feel good at all today. All around my belly-button and below felt tender and I felt nauseated. This morning, I could not imagine eating ANY Chinese food today. I ate peaches-n-cream oatmeal I had brought and felt as though I had accomplished a major feat. Andrew couldn’t get through the receptionist today and this shortened our conversation time as he did call on the cell phone. Just what I needed, feeling crappy in a foreign country and I can’t even whine to my safety net. What’s more who knows how much we will pay for that 8 minute phone call. Oh well, it’s worth it.
I balked all morning, eating pepto bismol tabs and wishing for Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Nothing seemed to help. I needed to drink my coffee as I was getting a headache, but the thought of drinking coffee soured my stomach, too. I forced myself to get up and shower and get ready for XiaoPan and Summi. Considering if anyone of us students is sick here, the whole hospital knows about it, I didn’t want to miss our trip to the silk market and have to fend off inquiries for the remaining time about how my stomach is doing. The oatmeal settled things enough to go.
The silk market was quite expansive and there many things I liked. However, we walked away from many things as XiaoPan suggested my counter bargains be about half of the asking price. Sellers got quite angry, glared at us and wouldn’t even counter. So, I missed out on some things. However, I was able to purchase things for others, too. Oh well, I have enough stuff. Some of the funniest articles of clothing were silk mu-mus like Mrs. Roper wore on the show Three’s Company. There were also fabric shops to buy silk for making your own stuff. I was wishing Andy was here and we had measurements of windows as there was some nice material for curtains.
Summi was quite conversant this time, telling us about her big test on Tuesday and that she’ll be taking high school level English next month. She’s also excited about a trip to Shanghai to go shopping – she plans to buy something from Zara, a Spanish store as well as jeans. She and her mother made inquiries into American life, such as how we paid for education and relationships with parents. It’s much different in China, as the parents generally still give their kids money while in university and the children live with parents for much longer than we do. Summi’s parents may be sending her to a boarding high school, which Summi isn’t sure if she will like
We once again went to the wonderful restaurant just behind out apartment and they made wonderful selections. Though my stomach had calmed quite a bit, it was still feeling unsettled. I avoided the spicy chicken that the girls wanted and tried to not eat too much, but alas, I still feel overfull and uncomfortable. I think I’ll take more pepto and hope that I don’t need TCM, as they’ll definitely have a case when they see my black tongue (from the pepto)!