this, that, the other thing

There's a super awesome staff at our University who are constantly serving us "foreign teachers." We need lightbulbs... we call them. We need our hot water to be fixed... we call them. We need to know how in the world to work our washing machine since we can't read what any of the buttons say... we call them. You'd think they would get tired of us really quickly, but they keep calling us too... informing us that we must go do this or that or the other thing. And really a lot of times when they call that's about how vague it is: "this, that, the other thing." We're never quite sure where we're going or what we are doing... we just follow them around when they tell us to. Recently, we were doing just that and one of them told me, "In two days we will go to the city at 8am!" I said, "Oh, for what? Shopping? Sightseeing?" She smiled and nodded and held my hand (a precious, not weird at all, thing here).

:: Two days was a pretty good warning. Sometimes it's more like 2 minutes. ::

A few minutes later, reality became slightly more apparent. "You have to go to the doctor." Oh, I see. Not so much about fun, more about getting things done. I'm cool with that. But why do we have to go to the doctor? I spent a pretty big chunk of money getting all my doctor stuff done to fill out crazy forms before I left the states. But okay, I shall roll with the punches.

:: Two days pass by. 8am rolls around. We hop in a van. ::

Ten minutes down the road we are asked, "Do you have all of your documents?" "What documents?" "All of them." "What documents?" "The Foreign Expert documents that you had for your visa." "No. We do not have those. They kept them when we got our visas." "But you need them." "No one told us we needed them. We have copies, but not the originals." "You have them with you?" "No. Why would we have them with us?" "You needthem."

:: Van turns around. All of us sit confused about why we need all of these papers to go to the doctor. Papers are retrieved, the ones we can find anyway, and we pile back into the van and get back on the road. ::

The doctor visit was an experience that could be a post in and of itself. I will now simply say, I've never been so poked and prodded in my life... nor have I felt so much like I was being herded like cattle (although I did recently play a cow in a drama... moooo!).

:: We finish at the doctor and think we're done. But the next thing we know we're pulling up at a government building and told to get out of the car. ::

"What are we doing here?" No clear answers were given but we were certain it had something to do with getting our residency permit. We didn't mind. We knew we needed to do this and getting it done sounded fabulous. But we were just confused about the process. They took us in an office and we waited while they talked to person after person, all of them appearing to not know what to do. We eventually found out we needed other papers from other offices. So again, we followed, again not knowing why or where we were going. I lost track of how many times this happened. During the process there was a lot of... HURRY UP! and WAIT - "We can't go to the next place until this paperwork is done. It'll take an hour." It actually took an hour and a half, but we got it and moved on to the next stop (which we didn't know was coming). But then of course, tt was closed for lunch for another 1.5 hours.

So, basically. It was a long day of not knowing what in the world was going on and sitting in the van doing this:

Cultural lessons: 1. Friends here always want to tell you what they think you want to hear. They don't mean to lie or mislead you, but it might seem like that's what they are doing sometimes. Just be patient, read between the lines, and always assume that there is something going on that you just don't understand. 2. Life here is not and will not be: "Get this done. Bam. Bam. Bam." Things always take longer than you think they should and you're gonna have to let go.