Halfway Done
Hello to everyone,
As you can see from the title we are halfway done with our China adventure. Luke had his fourth stem cell treatment, 3rd spinal today and is know confined to the bed for next 4 hours. The first two have been spent watching Baby Einstein andLuke flirting with all the nurses that keep checking on him. He is doing well with his daily grind of therapy and continues to get stronger everyday. He seems to enjoy his standing therapy the most, there is a flat table that he is strapped into and then raises straight up. I think he likes the different perspective until his little legs get so tried that they make his poutty lip come out. When he is finished with his morning therapy he is truly exhausted. This was the only stem cell treatment for this week only therapy Thursday and Friday andthen a free weekend.
Yesterday I hired a caregiver to watch Luke for the day and friend I have meet here from Canada decided to Tidaong Square in downtown Qingdoa. It was quite an adventure and reaffirmed to me that I will not be taking Luke on that long of a taxi ride, about 45 min one way. I have never seen driving like it is done here and I doubt you will anywhere in the United States. Street lanes are completely disregarded, if they can get their taxi between the delivery truck and the minivan, even if only by a couple of inches they will try it and be honking the horn the entire way. I think the first thing people check in the morning is if there horn is working before they take to the streets.
Downtown Qingdoa is such a busy place, I have been to a few big cities in the states and they are not even close to the same, people everywhere. In the Tidaong Square it is a pedestrian mall with thousands of shops selling just about anything you can think of, except donkey sandwiches. I went into one in the basement of a cell phone store, when you walked in you were hit with a cloud of cigarette smoke and could not even see the back of the shop. Do you know what was for sale, CELL PHONES as far as you could see. There was also a tattoo parlor.
Couple of things I saw yesterday worth mentioning: 1st) I saw a man herding 5 full size goats down the shoulder of a 8 lane highway. 2nd) I saw 4 people riding on one small Honda motorcycle in the rain, I am not sure if they did but it looked like they were going to pull on the same 8 lane highway. I didn’t see this but another family at the hospital saw a person riding a bicycle with a customized milk crate attached to the back with a small child riding in it down a busy street.
Thanks for everyone’s emails, comments, prayers and support. Luke and I are both looking forward to seeing some familiar faces in a couple of weeks.
Clint and Luke
16 comments October 22nd, 2008
