Pinky.... why so Angular?

My most recent adventure came yesterday while playing basketball with some visitors, some local foreigners and some local C-landers. we had 4 teams, and my team was on our way to winning our 3rd straight game. My teammate gave me a bounce pass that ended up being a bit to low to the ground, and when I went to grab it, it jammed (or so I thought) my pinky on my left hand. With my pinky throbbing I tried to take a shot with my right hand. Then, thinking... Man! I jammed my pinky, I chanced to look at it and notice that it was at an exact perpendicular angle to the rest of my hand. Ironically enough, we were playing basketball at the Kunming Medical University, and the hospital was just around the block. So we walked down the block, and commenced the circus that is a Chinese hospital:
1. Go to entry window and pay 6rmb for the initial consultation.
2. Walk inside, see doctor 1. Doctor 1 recommends X-Ray and fills out a form.
3. Take form down the hall to x-ray room.
4. X-ray room fills out a form for how much it will cost.
5. take form for price of xray down the hall to window 2 and pay 100RMB for the x-ray.
6. Go back to x-ray room. Have attendant try to flatten dislocated pinky against table for x-ray. Pain. Attendant gives up. Takes 2 x-rays. wait 30min doe xrays. Get x-rays. Friend Neil gets squirmy.
7. Take x-rays back to Doctor 1.
8. Doctor 1 sends us to Building 1, Floor 4. the "bone department"
9. Bone department doctor 2 looks at finger, massages back into a straight line.
10. Doctor 2 & 3 suggest putting finger in "plaster" .
11. Amber, Niel, Alan, and I in chorus: "plaster!"
12. Doctor 3 makes me sign waiver that just a splint is ok.
13. Sign waiver, Go to another room to have finger put into a splint.
14. Realize that Kunming doesn't have "american dislocated finger splints"
15. Doctor 2 tries to make a "splint" out of what we can only guess is possibly a urin collection container.
16. We decide that maybe plaster is better.
17. Get cast-like splint thing put on my pinky, along with about 5lbs of something that resembles pre-wrap. (see photo)
18. Look silly.
19. Doctor 3 give me form.
20. Take form back down to window 2 on floor 1 of building 3 to pay for plasterizing,
21. Bring receipt for payment back over and up to Building 1 Floor 4.
20. Leave.

Total time at Hospital fun-park: 2 hours.
Total cost of stay at Hospital Fun-Park 182RMB : $26.64
Seeing Neil get all squirmy from looking at my finger or the x-ray: priceless.

2,582 Stairs

My most recent adventure was the Great Wall Half-Marathon in Beijing, China. Yes, I went up to Beijing to run in it (for some reason they couldn't bring the wall to us in Shanghai) and yes i had FUN! completing the course in 2:45:00. I'm already planning for next year.... how to get a faster time (start in front, every man for himself). The run started. 4.5 kilometers uphill on a winding paved road (to get up to the level of the wall)..... once your legs were sufficiently jelly-ized, they threw you onto 3.2 km of steep up and down stairs as you tried to enjoy the view while also trying not to fall to your death off the wall. It wasn't until almost 8km into the race that we finally got to run on something approaching a level surface. The race concluded by winding through a local village where Chinese ladies and kids clapped and chanted: clap clap clap Jia You! clap clap clap .... gude times for all except another girl from SMIC who acidentally took the half-marathoner's turn-off and ended up running an extra 3 miles or so above her FULL marathon :( oh well... besides the extra time, i don't think she actually minded the extra distance. I ended up finishing 87th overall (women) and 22nd in my age-group.

Love At First Scoot

I got a scooter! Her name is Sasha.... and I can't believed I've gone 3 years without her! haha. And now that the weather has turned warm, we'll be virtually inseparable. She was born on the first day of spring, being one of two paternal twins..... the other being "Danny Boy". She has since competed in one official LQ 100m drag race, and many other informal races (one with a gas powered scooter,,, but really, that's not a fair match up). Of her many races, she in the undefeated champion (even against her brother Danny Boy, but not against mr. Gas). She likes to sing when she scoots... so sometimes I sing with her so she doesn't feel silly, and recently she has had some feelings of insecurity (that she's an electric scoot scoot and not a gas powered scooter) so I've started making high-speed, engine-reving, gas-powered noises for her wherever we go (to the dismay of my roommate when she rides on the back and has to be seen with us). Scoot scoot has even proven to be a "guy-magnet" as roomie Andrea and I had a car-full of Chinese guys rolll down the window and whistle at us as we were scooting home! haha. I think that's one perk of scoot scoot's that I could pass on.