Chinese Bugs

I'm sorry for the long blog silence -- I caught a cold on the way to or in Harbin, and it hit with a vengeance on my return, which then took advantage of my asthmatic lungs to progress to bronchitis and another bacterial infection on top of that!  So I've been pretty much lying around sleeping and trying to recover for the past two weeks.  I was reluctant to go to the doctor, mostly due to the effort it would take, but after I began feeling achy/miserable again at the end of this past week, I decided it was time.  I went to the International SOS clinic, which our scholarship pays for, and I don't think it was the typical Chinese doctor experience.  When Lara lived with me, she was seeing a Chinese doctor for her ear, and it sounded like she had a lot of communication difficulties, the doctor was never in, and they gave her medicine with no english labels or instructions and didn't bother to try to translate for her.  (hence why I was nervous going to the doctor!).  However, the International SOS clinic seemed just like any busy clinic at home, my doctor was from Australia, and everyone spoke English.  It was comforting when I was feeling less than chipper to not have to deal with communicating in a foreign language.  There's no way that regular (i.e. non-rich) Chinese people could go there though; the cost of my consultation alone was more than the Chinese students in my office make in a month!  Whew - thank goodness for insurance!