First Day in China

At the Hospital

Saturday was a major Holiday weekend in China (International Labor Day). Joseph got aquainted with the staff at the Hospital and met several patients as well. The facility is very nice, very new and very clean. The people are absolutely wonderful. Even though we brought x-rays and other medical records with us they wanted to do new x-rays. The equipment was very new and the doctor was first rate. . . the only interesting part was the audience-- all the others waiting for thier xrays formed an interested crowd watching joseph being transferred to the table etc. When the x-rays were done the big steel door shut (Star Trek style).

Lunch & Jazz Playoffs

Jack, a local university student hired as a English translator, walked us through ordering out for lunch. We got Chinese (surprize) it was pretty good. We kept the leftovers for another meal. The room has a little fridge, which is handy.
After Lunch we watched the end of the Jazz/Rockets game live on Chinese Television. They love basketball (and the Rockets because of Yao Ming). It was cool to see the Jazz shut the door on McGrady again.

To Market, To Market. . .
In the afternoon Jack offered to take us to the market to buy what we needed for the next few days. It was quite the excursion. We went with another patient from Florida and a couple of other caregivers. It was a little over a half-mile to the "RT Mart" a shopping center/Mall complete with KFC. It was pretty amazing and interesting. The city is beautiful and the weather perfect. The challenge of the day was getting Joseph's chair recharged. We brought a transformer for the 220 to 110 power converstion but it was smoked in short order. Joseph's chair took a turn smoking (hack, hack) and filing the room with fumes. and we smoked a borrowed transformer that was even larger. We were finally able to borrow another patient's charger that took a 220v input. Hummm.