Doctors Appointment In China

No, we aren’t sick.  Apparently we were supposed to have doctor appointments before we left the states in order to get our permanent multi entry 1 year visa.   A week into our stay here we got an e-mail saying something like…”we realize you are moving to China in a few weeks and need to schedule doctor appointments for your residence permit in order to get your permanent visa”. 

The ball was dropped here by the company that Adam’s company has hired relocate us.  They have dropped the ball so many times and I have to say Cree has been wonderful about helping us out even though I am sure they are paying this other company a ton of money. 

We took a taxi to the hospital, which was pretty far out of town and I was wondering if we would find a taxi home.  Adam nudged me and said “we just passed the hospital”.  Did we go with the right guy?  Does he know what we need?  We ended up going to the customs place that is a combo custom agency and doctor’s office.  The taxi driver stayed with us the entire time and seemed to enjoy every minute of it.  Stephen filled out all the paperwork without having to ask any questions except asking if I had a baby.  The mean lady behind the counter kept snapping at Stephen and didn’t even acknowledge us (we thought she didn’t speak English until another foreigner made a comment about her and she snapped back at him in perfect English).  Now our only concern was what was actually going to happen in the doctor’s office, how would I, a female have a translator in the room when our only translator was a male? 

Thankfully it wasn’t an official check up, no paper gowns, no waiting rooms, no old magazines.  We went from room to room getting different things done to us.  We had a chest x-ray, ultrasounds, blood taken, height, weight, blood pressure taken (by the way the combo scale, height measure machine yells out your height and weight repeatedly until the doctor turns it off…imagine how that would go with women in the US).  All along the taxi driver wondered around watching everyone get their blood pressure taken and having blood drawn (until the doctor kicked him out).  Our taxi driver then took us to get new visa photos and helped us pick out the best ones (I think it’s funny that he tried to explain what the photo shop lady was saying when he didn’t speak English either).  The photo shop lady doctored our photos just a little giving me more of a tan and both of us bright blue backgrounds. 

In the end, I think we are approved!