People upon people upon people.
Jill has decided to study Mandarin and, because of this, she will need to get a different visa.
She is on an “L” visa, which needs to switch it to a student visa in next few weeks.
In accordance with this change in status, she is required to get a health check.
Now, I work at a medical facility that is amazing.
It is, without a doubt, the most professional company I have ever worked for and I’m honored to be an employee there.
It is an expatriate company and that gives me a lot of security and feelings of safety since I see how they conduct their business.
Jill, on the other hand, has to go to a Chinese company to get this done and that had us a little worried.
We weren’t sure if they would speak any English, what the level of cleanliness would be, and how things would be handled.
We talked to a few friends that had been through it before, and we reassured, and decided we’d go together so I can give Jill support and call my office in case anything goes wrong.
We woke up, got ready and headed out for Jill’s health check.
We had to bring her passport, visa, 357RMB (about 60 USD), a passport photo and police registration (we have to register where we live every time we leave China with the police).
We hopped on the subway line 5 heading north and took that for about 30 minutes.
After that, we transferred to line 13, at one of the busiest stations in Beijing, and headed to Wudaokuo.
This gives you an idea of how insane this station can be. This isn’t even the rush hour.
Wudaokuo is the student/expatriate/collegiate area and the health check area is about 20 minutes away from it by bus.
If we could find the bus.
Which, at first, we couldn’t.
The exit from the Wudaokuo station to the bus station was pretty darn confusing.
We ended up, after walking around for about 10 minutes, finding the right bus and got on.
It took us out through the tech area in the north of Beijing and we saw all kinds of crazily designed buildings that we made for major technology companies from around the world.
That was interesting but the traffic was horrendous. It took us about 45 minutes to go about 3 miles.
The city is growing so fast that it is really becoming a problem and this was a good example of it right here. And just another reason we are moving 1 block from where I work so that we don’t have to commute as much in a few weeks. It just becomes tiring and stressful after too long.
The worst part was the bus ride, after 45 minutes, seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
We showed a fellow bus rider our map and he told us to get off and go the other way.
We then got off, decided enough of this wasted time, and hailed a cab.
It seems we were headed in the right direction and would have been there if we had just taken the bus for 3 more stops.