Well, that was the worst string of bad luck I've experienced in a while. I guess I'm lucky that it was only bad luck for like... getting back home and not something worse like losing my wallet, or bad luck with my graduate school applications (which, I am very happy to announce, I have finished applying for!). I mean, I guess that's pretty bad luck anyways... but as they say... it could've been worse. I could have broken something or not healed as fast.
But yeah. I got discharged from the hospital Monday... but my journey didn't end there.
So, I wrote that entry at the hospital on Sunday night/early monday morning because I had very little to do. It was actually a good thing I was awake that late and writing because they came in to take my blood pressure, heartrate, and temperature while I was writing that. At 2 am! Crazy. But when I woke up in the morning, my fever was actually not as bad - practically gone. Breakfast was this congee/jook stuff that wasn't too bad, since they used like... actual chicken soup or something. And! They actually gave me a couple pieces of cantaloupe. This was big, since fruit was on the forbidden list. My stomach didn't make too many weird noises either. The doctor came back and told me that it was possible for me to get discharged that day, and that the customer service downstairs would help me get everything in order and rebook my flight and stuff. I had to pay an extra hundred dollars because they weren't able to find the same booking class I made the reservation in, but at that point it was like... ugh, I just want to get back.
So they made my reservation for the same flight I had missed: the 1am flight on Tuesday. This meant I was going to get back sometime around Tuesday afternoon. The whole morning was spent in correspondence with my prefectural advisor and emails to my teachers and supervisors and family and friends (one of whom kindly called my supervisor for me, since in Japan, monday was a national holiday... so nobody was going to be checking their emails until Tuesday when it was too late.) So people knew what was going on. I had to deal with things for insurance and stuff, with getting paper work. Once they knew I was going to get discharged, things like medication and paper work started to slowly but surely trickle in.
One of our family's friends who was working and living in Thailand came to visit me with his driver and stuff. He kindly offered to give me a ride to the airport if I could leave that afternoon when he visited, but at that point I didn't have all the paper work I needed, and they said taxis were fairly cheap so I just opted to take a taxi to the hospital since there was a protest happening near his wife's workplace, which was going to back up the traffic for two or three hours. Super sucky.
Before he arrived though, I had the chance to eat lunch and shower. Lunch was a chicken patty thing with two potatoes (I think that's like... one of the only main dishes I had those few days) and also pork wonton soup, which, to my surprise, was actually really freaking tasty. They gave me fish sauce to add to the pork wonton broth (which was like all the broth I had before, which is to say, it tasted like water). But the fish sauce? Oh my god. It was like magic. IT MADE IT TASTE AMAZING.
Showering was more interesting, since I was still attached to the IV drip at that point. I had to call the nurse in to ask her how I should shower, if she could just disconnect the IV drip from the bag for a little bit and then... she disappeared. I got super worried, because I thought she was going to take the IV out of my hand and then put it back in when I finished. I don't think I could have done that again, put the IV back in my hand. I mean, I had a hard enough time doing it when I was half conscious and sick and kinda in pain already, but now? I was like, no way.
Luckily for me, when the nurse returned, she told me that I didn't actually need the IV anymore, so she just took it out for good. It left a huge bump in my hand, and is still a little sore when I press on it now or stretch my hand. I also have a little dot there where it went in. My bruise from where they drew blood has finally disappeared too. I think I almost passed out when they drew my blood, cause I could feel myself get lightheaded and start to do that ah-ha-ha-nervous-laughter kind of thing after they were pulling blood for a few moments. Part of me panics a little, but usually I'm able to keep it under control unless they pull blood for too long.
The shower was really really nice though, since I hadn't showered since I left the Philippines (though other than being sick, it's not like I really did anything...)
Eventually, I got all my paperwork that I needed for insurance stuff - it turns out that we JETs *are* covered when we travel abroad, through both the national insurance as well as an additional JET insurance, which is good, because my bill was *not* cheap. I was also told that my hotel was not one of the cheapest hotels - er, and by hotel I mean hospital, but inside kinda felt like a hotel. People spoke English there and it was super clean and nice. And there was the clinic visit, the ER visit, the hospital food, the room itself, the doctors, the ambulance... yeah, thank god for insurance.
Right though. So after I got discharged, I went to the airport since they said that I wouldn't really have much time to explore the city on my own, plus at that point I was more concerned about getting home than I was about looking around. Plus, I decided that it probably still wasn't a good idea to eat like... street food with my stomach, so I elected to stay at the airport after checking in. Read or something.
I did get to hang out with my friend though! She actually came to the airport to visit me :) That made me super happy. She also helped me go on a manhunt for my baggage, since we weren't sure if it was in Thailand, Beijing, or in Osaka since it had been checked all the way in theory. Eventually, after being let back in to baggage claim, we managed to find it and they brought it out for us. THank goodness! We had dinner together (and I got some pad thai, which she pronounced to be not actually pad thai but hey, I wasn't super picky at that point) and waited until I could check in for my flight before parting ways. She was one of my friends from my study abroad program, The Scholar Ship. I hadn't seen her in five years, so it was a super special treat to be able to see her again.
At 1 am, I boarded my plane from Bangkok to Beijing and decided I was going to sleep for most of it. ANd sleep I did, when they weren't serving us food (which actually wasn't half bad). But when I woke up, we had landed... in Taiyuan, about 6-7 hours away from Beijing, where we were supposed to be. Nobody knew what was going on, but eventually, my seat buddy, who spoke Chinese and English, found out and then passed along that we were unable to land in Beijing due to "fog" (I don't think it was just fog...) so we were going to chill there until we got cleared.
So we sat there. For three hours. THREE HOURS. They gave us these biscuit cookie things... but they weren't letting anyone off the plane. By the time we were actually cleared to leave, we still had an hour of travel to do. By the time we got into Beijing, it was already 11:30 am.
My connecting flight to Osaka was supposed to be at 8 am.
We got put at the very end of the terminal... and holy christ, Beijing's airport is HUGE. There are actually two (or three?) terminals, and I was lucky in that I was in the same terminal... but I swear, it's like a half mile to where the transfer area is. I almost ran to the international transfers counter, where they told me (after having to wait ages behind this really slow couple) that my plane had already left a while ago. I was like, wtf.
They rescheduled me for another flight, one that left at 4. I really should have asked them, or someone, if I could reschedule my flight to the one that left two hours earlier. I went to the gate to see if there was anyone, but I only saw that the flight was delayed an hour and there was still nobody at the gate, an hour before it was supposed to fly. So I decided I would get lunch since that'd at least probably boost my mood, and send off a few more emails and check train times.
Lunch was really tasty. I didn't have Chinese food... kinda. I had suejiao, or boiled dumplings. They were pretty tasty :3 and I had lasagna, since who knew when I was going to get that again. It was hella small though. And they had a charger area as well, so I was looking up train times and emailing people while I killed time. I figured an hour difference wasn't too bad, though my flight was going to maybe not get me back in time to take the last train to Takahashi.
After lunch, I went to check the boards again since I had no idea where my gate was and started walking towards there.... and then I checked the board again closer, only to find out my flight had been delayed an hour as well.
I started to panic. I pulled out my computer and checked the train times again... only to find out that now, instead of missing the last train back to Takahashi, there was a very real chance I would miss the last train back to Okayama. And the flight I was thinking of asking to transfer to was in its final boarding call, so basically, I couldn't make that flight.
I think at that point, I got really down because I was like, what do you mean, I can't even get back to my home prefecture? We were slightly delayed in getting off the ground as well because a couple people were late and also I don't know what.
We landed in Osaka and I practically ran off the train and to get my bags and everything and through customs. By the way, bringing cans of food and oatmeal in to Japan? Totally doable. Worth hauling a heavy suitcase everywhere. Now the problem is... do I hoard it, or do I just eat it whenever I feel like it? Decisions.
But I got out and ran to the train station and decided against buying a shink ticket since I wasn't a hundred percent sure when the train left and all, or if I would have time. I decided on taking JR for some stupid reason, and got on the first train that left there since it was cheaper.
It wasn't until I was on the train that I checked the times and stuff. I had come in a couple minutes too late for the subway line that would have gotten me to the shink station in time, so getting back tonight was kind of impossible. The trains that I could have caught wouldn't actually get me to the station in time. One train got in two minutes after the train left. There was only a train that went back to Himeiji, still a good hour and a half away from where I was.
So knowing this, I decided to look for a place to stay, and messaged the people on our Okayama AJET group asking for suggestions and found a place that wasn't too far from the train station for a not ridiculous price. They had free breakfast too. I decided to go there and decided that I was going to try to catch the first train back, which would have gotten me back to school actually on time for work, maybe.
By the time I got to the hotel and checked in, it was already like... 00:45, but I was feeling super gross so I decided to take a shower after getting a little settled and sending off some emails to people so they had an update on what was going on. When I got out of the shower.... I discovered that the water was stuck or something, and it wouldn't actually turn off. It wasn't a small trickle either. I'm talking like, gushing water. It had two settings. Gushing, or torrential gushing downpour. Not the kind of thing you want to keep running, so I contacted the front desk and they told me that I would have to change rooms. At 2 am. By the time I actually got into bed, it was 2:30, and at that point, I was like, no way am I going to be at the train station by 5:45 to catch the 6 am train. I actually tried to wake up at 6:30 to catch the next train... but I woke up and then decided that sleep was a better idea for my body, and went back to sleep.
The trip back to Okayama, thankfully, was rather non-eventful. I'm okay with that. I got back, ate lunch, and then went in to work since I had to talk to some of my teachers and get stuff sorted out.
Longest. Trip. Back. Ever.
So, if you count the days I was sick, from when I was supposed to be back...
I was supposed to get back to Takahashi Sunday around 1pm. I didn't get back until Wednesday around 1pm. It took me three extra days to get back.
Hot damn.
Never flying through Beijing again though, if I can help it. It's not worth saving that much money to get dicked over that hard and for that much stress. I'm not overly fond of Air China either and their old planes.
I'm just happy to be back.
Oh, also I turned in my paper work for my recontracting. In a way, it was kind of easy since I had already made the decision to apply to graduate school a long time ago, and the deadline for the papers was long before I would find out any results.
Bittersweet. It feels like I have a limited amount of time here. It makes me sad though, because the people here are just so... awesome.
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