"Ouch, my toe!!" -July 14th

Today we woke up and went to class. It's really interesting (I dont' know if I've said this before) because my professor hhas actually experienced everything he lectures about- Land Reform, Cultural Revolution, re-education- so it's really cool to hear all of his stories. After lecture, we all excitedly went to lunch at the corner place before getting ready for Beijing. As we were walking, Kevin was walking in front of me and he slowed down, but because I was talking to someone next to me, I didn't see and I ran my foot (specifically my toesies) into his heel. It hurt so so bad, but I thought I was just being a little baby, so I sucked it up. But when we got there, it still hurt, so I knew something was wrong. I kinda started freaking out because it was really painful and I was pertty confident it was fractured. I've only broken one bone in my body- my pinky toe on my left foot- so I was just like, "Great! Let's go for toe #2 on my right foot!!" I started crying and it was really sad. We have so much walking to do and I was really disappointed my foot wouldn't be at its prime. I waited a while before deciding to go to the hospital because we didn't have much time before our train, but finally Faith and I went. We should've gone with a Chinese speaker, but we did pretty well for ourselves. We went to an "American" hospital and by that I mean and extremely clean hospital with excellent service and theh people speak English. I have never gotten better service at any hospital ever- and I can say that I've goen enought to know. My doctor was super nice and friendly. There was an elevator girl, whose job is simply to ride it up and down and press the button for people. She was quite amused by us and would smile and giggle when we'd get in the elevator. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but everyone stares at us (white people). Faith and others are pretty annoyed by it, but I hardly notice really. Anyway, I was in and out within an hour with x-ras and everything!! Luckily, my toe was not fractured, just severly sprained. It's all purple and green... oh so pretty!! Although it sucked, I'm glad I got to experience the hospital. Once we got back, we had an hour before leaving. We went on the trip with the other UCLA sponsored program- Business Chinese. There is a little animosity between the two groups, so I am interested in seeing how it will all work out. It is a 12 hour train ride from Shanghai to Beijing and we were super impressed with the train. It was super nice and almost nicer than our dorm rooms. I shared a room with Michelle, Faith, and her roomie, Ruby. We had so muc fun, just chatting and playing MASH (I know, totally middle-school-style). The BC people were heavily drinking and were playing silly kissing games. They were being super loud and we were a bit annoyed, but oh well. I slept really well considering it was on a train. I fel like I was rocked to sleep like a little baby... :)