Slides: A picture of our trip to Harbin

As told by Mitch Hedberg:

As an adult I'm not supposed to go down slides,
So if I end up at the top of a slide,
I have to act like I got up there accidentally.
"How'd I get up here?!? Boy Howdy!!"
I guess I just have to slide down.
"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"
That's what you say when you're having fun,
You refer to yourself, and some other people.

Harbin was full of slides. I referred to myself and some other people a lot! :)

Holiday Shopping Guide: Gifts that Keep on Givin'

For you early planners, this is probably too late; but for you procrastinators here are some Holiday shopping ideas: places that have cool gifts/clothing/etc, and when you buy, your gift keeps giving to the various causes they support :)

To Write Love on Her Arms : Clothing, Jewelry

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

Invisible Children : Clothing, Jewelry, Movies

Who We Are: Motivated by the unseen war in Northern Uganda, Invisible Children was created by three young filmmakers with a singular mission:To use the power of stories to change lives around the world.

Invisible Children improves the quality of life for war effected children by providing access to quality education, enhanced learning environments, and innovative economic opportunities, for the community.

Suubi Africa Hope : Jewelry

What we do...
In addition to buying each week (and tripling their usual profit), the Light Gives Heat volunteers also run weekly Literacy and English classes for the women of Suubi and simply spend time with the women. The majority of the 120+ women are Acholi widows who have been displaced from Northern Uganda because of an over 20-year-long war that has directly affected their tribe and homeland.

If you have any other sites you'd like to suggest, just give me a shout :) Or leave it in a comment :)

It's Dark in Here: Why I'm so Angry...

A Follow-Up to: Pendy, Why so Angry?

I sat there for years upon years, precariously balanced between Large Intestine and Small Intestine, doing nothing. Have you ever felt purposeless? It is not a happy feeling. I didn't want it, but there was nothing for me to do. I wasn't made to work, I was just made to sit there. For 26 years I sat, while everyone around me excitedly worked, processed, produced, planned, moved, transferred.

Useless, I was useless.

The inside was also a hot, dark place. Too hot really—for everyone, which meant that everyone was always complaining. It was also wet, which means that sound that your feet make when walking in sneakers that are soaking wet, was constantly happening, all around me–surround sound. That same squish squish squish over and over and over. It drove me crazy.

Then something began to grow on me. It made me hotter, it made me itchy, it made me bloated. I got more and more uncomfortable but nobody cared—they were too busy...doing something. Finally I began to put up a fuss, it simply was NOT okay for me to be THIS uncomfortable. Plus, the itchy stuff had spread, I had become even more bloated (which was wreaking havoc on my already low self image self-esteem), and I let out a little scream. I pushed and pushed, and screamed, and hoped the outside could hear me, or at least could feel me.

Something was wrong. They must know. They must KNOW!

Every once in a while something from the outside would poke in at me, as if telling me to shut-up. When they poked at me it made me feel like I would pop, which made me scream even more.

The bloating continued. I felt like a balloon. I felt that even if the outside didn't poke in at me anymore, I might pop anyway, I couldn't help it, the itchiness was making me do it.

Suddenly stars appeared across the sky. Three tiny spotlights that shone in on me. I saw a substance I'd never seen before. Indeed, it made the darkness go away. Moving through it were different types of substance, and they made a loud noise.

I was ripped out. Squeezed out. Popped out. Slapped on something cold. Too cold. And hard. Very hard. I began to shiver. I rolled back and forth as the cold thing jolted this way and that. I was scared. The others were gone. The squish-squish was gone. I was still bloated. And this bright haziness was surrounding me, and constantly changing, always changing. It was too much to try to watch, so I shut my eyes.

The cold thing paused. Out of the substances came a VERY loud noise. It scared me. So I opened my eyes. But there was more loud noises that scared me. I closed my eyes. The cold thing began jolting again. Made a sudden clang. And stood still.

The coldness. The coldness. I would give anything to be back in the warmth. To hear the squish-squish. It didn't matter anymore that I was useless. I liked it in there. My friends. All that they would have left is The Space. The Space is even more useless than me. But the coldness is too much. It is too...

Pendy Why So Angry??!

So before I begin this story, I must tell you two of my bigger fears in life:

1. Having one of those diseases where you just think it's normal flu symptoms etc etc, but then it ends up being something that untreated can kill you in a matter of days.
2. Having to have emergency surgery in China

I think most people can relate to number 1, especially after watching a movie like Outbreak. And anyone whose has had to go into a Chinese hospital knows that (especially compared to American hospitals where people are like OCD about them being clean) they're not the cleanest of places.

So, with the stage set: enter Angry Pendy.
The night before Halloween, I went to sleep feeling GREAT (Tony the Tiger Grrreat). Well, by 3am, I had been woken up by an incredible pain in my abdomen. I tried sleeping on my back, on my side, I went to the bathroom, I tried sleeping on my couch, on the floor, back up to my bed. By 7am the pain hadn't subsided for one second (even in my dreams I was trying to figure out how to get rid of the pain), it had also moved down to the right side of my abdomen, and I decided that something was really wrong. My roomate googled "abdominal pain", and she went through the symptoms of each. "Do you have this?" "No." "This?" "No." "This?" "Yes." "This?" "No." "This?" "Yes,.... yes.....yes." :( All things pointed to Appendicitis.

After a call to my boss's wife, and a call by one of her Chinese friends to other Chinese friends, and a call by me to a fellow teacher who had also had appendicitis in China (and had a considerably worse experience), we decided on which hospital I should go to..... by taxi :)

Interesting Discovery #1: Apparently in China, hospitals are split up a bit more by what kind of care they give, and what kinds of things they treat... unlike hospitals in the States where–save very specific specialties–they are prepared to treat everything.

So, I went to the hospital with Regina (boss's wife) and Alice (another Kindie teacher who's Chinese, and also speaks English). They did this test and that test and Declared.... That I must have surgery. But they did it so passively that I looked at Alice and said... are they sure? When Jenny (another friend who spoke fluent Chinese) came, she pressed the doctors on how sure they were that I REALLY needed surgery, to which they apparently exclaimed.... "It's about to pop! yes, she needs surgery! Don't worry about how I know, I'm the doctor, let me worry about it." To which she said, "well.. WHAT are you waiting for???"

So, very soon I was placed in a wheel chair (which was weird because I could walk) and wheeled up to the 12th floor VIP/International wing. I got a very nice hospital room, and then I waited, and waited, and Jenny kept pressing them saying.... she needs to get in quickly! and they'd say... I know I know, don't worry, she's on the emergency list, and as soon as XY and Z surgeries are done, she'll go in. In the meantime I signed at least 8 forms, all in Chinese of course, that pretty much provided for any number of things to change or go wrong. One was for just plain old laproscopic surgery, one was in case that wasn't enough and they had to make an incision, one for if they got inside and found out that it wasn't appendicitis but was instead a tumor, and another and another.... I imagined that some said "if I have a healthy extra kidney you can have it, and any other organs you might need for that matter." So after many more pressings of the doctor by Jenny, and many of my signatures on unknown Chinese medical forms, the doctor came in with a gerny and said "it's time" (but in Chinese of course).

So, I was strapped to a green gurney... quite well (i'm talking heavy blanket and three 5-inch thick pieces of velcro), and I was wheeled through the hospital, the whole time having scenes from Scrubs (the only hospital comedy or drama I watch) running through my head, and thinking... so this is what it's like to be strapped to a gurney and wheeled through a hospital. All I could see were the ceiling lights (but in my head I could see all the Chinese people staring at the mei guo ren who was being paraded through the passageways.) When we reached the doors to the surgery wing, Jenny and Regina had to stay outside, and then I was alone with the doctors and nurses—most of whom didn't speak any English. As I lay in the middle of the surgery room–which was quite large, and actually had quite a few people standing around waiting and laughing, and every once in a while saying "lao wei" (which means foreigner) excitedly. Yes, I thought, you get to operate on a white person today. Have fun, but do a good job!

As they got everything ready around me, and hooked me up to an IV and put little suction things around my heart to make sure it was beating, the anesthesiologist came up and was one of the few people who could speak some English. She asked me if I had had anesthesia before, and then, just before she put the mask over my mouth to put me under she said... "You just...have to... trust us." I smiled and said a short prayer.

When I woke up (the first time I remember being awake anyway... as opposed to how Regina said I was "awake" and mumbling as they wheeled me out of the surgical room) I felt like I had had a really good nights sleep. I had missed all the "fun" of sugery, and I didn't even get to see Pendy before they took him off to the lab for testing.

Apparently in Chinese hospitals if they remove an organ a family member has to verify that they removed the correct organ.

This meant that while I was still "in surgery" one of the doctors came out into the hall to talk to Jenny. She came over thinking that he had to tell her something about how my surgery was going... suddenly the doctor flung a tray in front of her face.... with my appendix on it! She screamed and called Regina over whilst hiding her face—I'm sure the image of my appendix isn't what she wanted burned into her brain.

My surgery and recovery have seemed to go off without a hitch. They said my appendix on the scale of good to Pop-happy was about a medium-pop. They were able to do everything they needed to do with just the laproscopic surgery, but at the same time, there was quite a bit of "contamination" that they had to clean up... and they thought that if I had had to wait even a few more hours it would have ruptured.

So, this brings me back to the two fears that I voiced at the beginning, and how because of the fact that I a) knew that something was wrong wrong.... wrong enough to go to the hospital wrong, and didn't just brush off the pain with a few meds and b) that my experience of having surgery (like I said I don't like surgeries..well.. who does...and I don't like hospitals) and how well it went... I have to thank God for his protection over me throughout the whole process, and also for the amazing caring friends He put around me the whole time (I had uber visitors, and my wonderful roomie even stayed the night at the hospital with me on the couch in my room for the weekend!)

I know that my parents (especially my mom) felt really terrible that I had to be in a hospital, in China, and that they couldn't be there with me... and while there's no one quite like a mother (and a father) when you're sick, God made sure that I had the second best---many friends and other mother types and people to make me fresh soup.. yummmm!

So now I'm out... and Brian (the guy that I coach Basketball with) has even allowed me to start playing a bit during our practices... haha. After 3-weeks I kept telling him it was ok... my holes were healed, it was good for me... but he made the girls vote about weather I should be allowed to play or not.. and they voted no, and he smiled and said.. maybe next time.. .it's for your own good. HA!

Alright, that's all for now. The-Space-Formerly-Known-As-Pendy says that he wants to share his side of the story... so maybe i'll let him post it on the blog later. :)

Here is a picture of me with Wilbur the IV. After him following me to the bathroom multiple times, I decided that we should be on a first name basis. He was fun for a while, but then he just got plain mean... always poking me with needles, never coming just to hang out.
Some of my first visitors: (this is my room before my new roomie moved in)

Yes, my mismatched hospital top is on backwards. They made me change it before surgery, and weaving my IV through one sleeve and out the other was hard enough to do once, let alone a second time after surgery. So I just left it the way it was.. the height of steeelo!