The Chinese Pharmacy

well, i knew it was inevitable that I would get sick again, (thankfully, I don't feel awful...yet) and as you all have read I will NEVER set foot in a Chinese hospital again.

Symptoms:

Cough

Stuffy nose

Sore throat

Again!

Nothing a little Amoxicillin can't fix! And you can get it in China without a prescription. Sounds easy, right? Well, do you honestly think if I went into the pharmacy and said "Can I please have some Amoxicillin, 500 mg, 30 pills please" (haha, i did my research online about doses, mgs, etc. im pretty much a doctor now too). Nope, it's not that easy.

So, using the ever so wonderful nciku.com, i looked up the word Amoxicillin, wrote it in characters and pinyin (the English way to pronounce the characters, and the number 500 and 30. Also, 250mg just in case.)

It looked like this -- 

yes, its backwards and hard to read but there it is. how i survived my chinese pharmacy experience and successfully got what i wanted!

that's not to say there wasn't a lot of laughter, charades and confused faces involved. for those of you who know me, i talk with my hands a lot :) so this is always super fun for me.

i was curious about dosages so i literally said... (in chinese obvi)

*throwing my hands in the air"Good Morning! 2 pills."

She nods and laughs!

*putting pretend spoon in my mouth "Eat food later. 2 pills."

She nods again and laughs more.

*did motion such as folding my hands under my head and closing my eyes "2 pills".

"For 10 days?"

My interpretation of the dosage schedule got her laughing pretty hard, and she even repeated the story to her co-worker which came out and laughed some more with us.

It was great i wrote this stuff down though in the characters because the entire box is in Chinese and I know I am getting the right stuff :)

let's hope this stuff works some magic in time for new year's tomorrow.

i refuse to miss out on new year's in this city.