Nanjing, day 3 (only?!)

So, after a complete meltdown last night, and a wonderful massage afterward, I realized that I am going through some pretty intense culture shock. Nothing is simple, everything seems like an ordeal and I always feel lost. I'm not sure how to explain how incredibly different it is here. People are wonderful and friendly, but at the same time unconcerned with you or your personal space. I'm not sure there is a cultural context for personal space. There are a lot of idiosyncrasies. For instance, riding in the bike traffic feels completely safe, but at the same time is a harrowing experience. I'll post a picture of it from this morning's commute for you...

<--so it's like that, for 45 minutes if we don't get lost, longer if we do. The flow of traffic is amazing. It is like a flock of birds or a school of fish--definitely an exercise in qi movement.
So, there is about 3-4 hours of bike riding per day so far, between the commute and getting around after clinic. I think it's good for me, but my legs are sore and getting more muscular by the second. When I was at the massage place the other night, the lady was doing some work on my legs, which was extremely ticklish but good for me. At one point she stopped and measured the circumference of my thigh and compared it with her own, mine was like a full thumb to forefinger larger than hers. We both had a good laugh. I think when she turned me over to work on my back, she did the same thing with my butt, but I couldn't tell for sure.

We had our first wednesday afternoon lecture, on acupuncture for emergency medicine. It was structured exactly like our TCM pathology classes back home, which was pretty funny. We learned about Coma, hiccups, and gallbladder attacks. I was pretty excited to learn about the coma stuff. I really hope that one day hospitals will allow acupuncture in emergency situations like this. There are too many people in comas from accidents or illnesses that could be helped by this simple procedure. And, how can it hurt?

In clinic, before the lecture, we did rounds in the inpatient hospital with our Dr., Dr Xu, who is incredibly nice. For you OCOMers, she is a lot like Hong Jin, plus a little bit of Zhenbo Li thrown in. She speaks english which is really very helpful. Her technique is beautiful, and I am excited to possibly start needling with her soon. So far we have seen a lot of sjogren's disease (sicca--an autoimmune disease that dries out the mucous membranes of the body, especially in the face), menopause, a few severe cancer cases, and a lot of shoulder pain. They do a lot of point injection therapy here, where they use an herb, mostly a lot of Huang Qi and inject it into acupuncture points. They use B12 as well, and then also a lot of herbs via IV. One man we saw with severe progressive liver cancer was on an IV of I believe toad skin venom. I asked for a list of the anti cancer herbs they use, and while I haven't been able to get them fully translated and find info about them yet, it seems like they're pretty toxic substances.

Ok, thats all the update I can do for now, I have to go to breakfast and start day 4. I'll try to get more pictures up soon, in all the overwhemledness, I honestly haven't been taking too many.