Chinese Pharmacy Adventures

Today was interesting. Josie was uncomfortable and we figured out that she probably had a urinary tract infection. Turns out hospitals are the bad way to go here, instead if one knows what pharmaceutical one needs, he only has to go to a local hole in the wall drug store and request it without a prescription and it costs about 50 cents. So we called our pediatrician at
home, got the dosage and name of what to give her based on the symptoms, paid 50 cents, no waiting, no doctor, and she has started to feel better already. Whoa. Oh, and thank goodness for Google Translate, because it translated the drug into Chinese characters and pinyin (alphabet spelling), so I just copied it onto a piece of paper and off we went.

Not only did we conquer that without a translator, but we also conquered lunch in a real restaurant without a translator, got what we ordered and the bill and paid and it was good!

Not to mention, we also hired a bilingual new college grad to be a nanny/tutor for Oscar and Josie 5 mornings a week so they can play and learn Chinese while Mike and I work on our computers near them, or out in the garden near them, or whatever. She comes highly recommended and a woman who already hired her for her expat kids went home to Ireland today for 6 weeks, so for those 6 weeks Vivi is ours and the kids will get some language
lessons through play while we get some stuff done. Working late at night after these long days has gotten very tiring I must say...

Oh, and Oscar and Mike got haircuts at a Chinese barber - for $1 each. Next door to the coconut seller who is next door to the pharmacy. Wait, there's more! We found a soft mattress thing to go on top of the excruciatingly hardChinese mattress (no clue why they sleep on such hard awful beds) that has essentially bruised my shoulders and hips every night - and we bought it for $50. I am so excited!!