The Long Break and the Health Check Up

I'll admit it. A full month of vacation with no real playmates to enjoy it with is kind of a drag. I started the month with great intentions, walking for 45 minutes in the morning in the hills behind my house, writing journals in Japanese and studying every morning, going to yoga or aerobics in the afternoons and then to Japanese classes in the evenings. That lasted about 4 days before I started getting lazier and lazier and lazier. Rockies' games on the internet helped, but they also made me lazy, as they don't usually start till 10 a.m. I went to Tokyo to see Scott for about 5 days, but at the end he was ready not to have Mom in his hair (or lack of it). There were a couple of bright spots when I went hiking with Jon in Kobe, and Hiromi, a former CSU student in Tokyo, as well as the day I struck out on my own and found 4 geocaches in Suma, a beach community in Kobe. Anyway, school starts on Monday, and I am happy to be getting back into a routine.
Last Friday, my college had a health check up day for faculty which I needed to attend. I started the day on the wrong foot when, with the help of an interpreter, I asked if they could check my blood for Thyroid (TSH) as well as the cholesteral, blood sugar that they said they were looking for. No, can't be done. I was a little rude, I guess, as it comes standard with blood work over here. I was also suspicious about them as they did not require fasting for the blood sugar and cholesteral checks. Oh well, on to the chest x-ray. It was in a health mobile in the parking lot, and I had to remove my bra. Fine. However, they told me not to put it back on, and the several other checks were all over campus. I had left my bags in my office, so I was left holding the bra, so to speak. I tried to hide it discreetly under my shirt, but I was feeling like a fool. After the blood draw and the urine sample, we went back to the parking lot to another health mobile where we drank barium and they checked my stomach (for what I don't know) by putting me in this fun house ride and barking orders at me in Japanese. It whirled me up down and sideways while the attendant kept trying to get me to put my arms in the right place. What I didn't realize until afterwards is that after you take barium, it's like the stuff you take before a colonoscopy. In short, don't stray far from the bathroom. A fitting end to my long break.