Health Check and IKEA

A brief update. Still haven’t unpacked the camera cords, will do that soon.
On Friday, I had my health check first thing in the morning. I had to go to a dingy office on the 10th floor of a tall building with Sherry, a Chinese woman who lived in Ireland for 6 years and thus spoke English quite well. She escorted me through the process. They compared a passport photo with another picture they took of me that morning, and proceeded to walk me through the several steps of the check. First I had my heart and lungs checked. Then they took my blood pressure and pulse - I was told that my heart beats very slow (59 bpm) and I have low blood pressure (109/71). Then they hooked me up to an ancient looking electro cardiogram machine. Next was an ulrasound of my ribcage and lungs (I was asked if I were pregnant, and said no – guess they may have seen if they looked in the right place, which they did not). Then an eye exam – they asked if I wore contacts and what my vision was without them, which I had to guestimate by pointing at the lines on the chart to where I thought I’d be able to see without contacts. I was then whisked off to the X-ray machine, from which pregnant women are exempt, and finally through to the blood draw (I had been fasting that morning). The woman was remarkably efficient and I felt almost nothing as she pricked me and drew two tubes. Lastly, and the most disgustingly, I had to pee in a cup in a dirty floor-toilet urinal, and literally carry my plastic cup to the lobby with the other people queued up to pour it into a test tube, then trashed the remainder in a trash can where everyone else’s dirty half-full urine cups were. Thank goodness there was a sink with real soap, but the air blow hand drier was out, so I had to shake my hands dry.
That was it!
Yesterday afternoon we did a round of grocery shopping and moved into our house, and today we went to IKEA. Lucia held hads with a little Chinese girl, and Alex got a photo on his iPhone – not sure when/how we’ll get it downloaded since he’s not using it here – but I’ll try. It was super cute – starting our connection to Chinese people, though I think Lucia is getting a bit irritated with the constant people touching her skin, hands, and hair and saying things like “Hello, how are you?” to her. The barrage continues… gotta jam, we’re trying to watch a movie with this computer, and drinking our IKEA Swedish “Glott” – kind of like sweetened/spiced white wine – a winter favorite, in Sweden, apparently. Someone remind me what country we’re in?