First of all, for all you who may be interested, I am now employed. I will be working for the Kang Chiao International School. I'll be teaching English. Mostly I'll be teaching TOEIC and TOEFL stuff, but the school offers a lot of English literature classes as well as social studies classes which I may also get the opportunity to teach. I'm thinking this is going to turn out to be a really good job. The only thing I'm not thrilled with is that I'll have a two hour commute each way which will make for a long day. That said, I'm actually really excited to get started. I'll begin July 25th. In the interim I'm going to have to find some things to do to keep me from going cock-eyed with boredom. I figure taking a Chinese class will be part of it, but I don't know what else yet.
The other thing that happened to me is that I discovered my sciatic nerve. Now those of you who have had experience with this wonder of the human anatomy know very well that it is literally a pain in the ass. Anyway, Rebecca sent me off to the National Taiwan University Hospital to get myself checked out. This was an adventure in and of itself. Following the signs that supposedly lead you to the Family Health Care clinic, I walked through a door which led me too a hallway that had a ceiling only an inch over my head. Not only that, but as I'm walking around I'm noticing that there's not much in the way of hospital type stuff going on, but that it's mostly small restaurants and convenience stores. So here I am, crouched over because I can't stand up straight due to the ceiling height, staring at people slurping up nodles and wondering what in the Hell have I got myself into. I finally find another sign that has an arrow pointing up some stairs and says Family Health Care. I follow and wind up in what seems to be the oncology lab. The first person who looked like they worked there that I talked to sort of looked at me and ran. So I did the next logical thing and called Rebecca, so that she could talk to someone and get me headed in the right direction. I finally get sent to the hospital lobby. Now when I got to the lobby, I was immediate reminded of a really crowded night market. There were five different sets of windows all labeled cashier and five million people milling around in what has to be some sort of organized fashion but at first glance was simply chaos. I stood in the middle of this, staring around in all directions and just laughing to myself thinking, "What the fuck do I do now?" Finally, Rebecca sent me a text with what I was looking for written in Chinese, and nice little helper woman got me pointed in the right direction. I got to the doctor, she told me I was suffering from a pinch sciatic nerve and prescribed some mild painkillers. This led to my next adventure.
The painkillers weren't doing much good, so Rebecca suggested that I should try acupuncture. I've never tried it before but had always heard positive things. Given that my hip was bothering me in a big way, I said, "What the Hell." I got to the clinic this morning and in short order was talking to the doctor who spoke excellent English and explained the process to me. It was all very civilized. The only kink in the works came when I had a fit of giggles thinking of the picture I must have presented laying there on my side with needles sticking out of my butt. Laughing makes your body move. Moving makes you able to feel the needles, which is a tad uncomfortable. So far, the pain is gone, but we'll see how long it lasts. The Doc said to go back Monday if the pain persists, so I will do that.
That is all for now...
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