After all the guests and groups I've hosted this year, I was feeling pretty good that everyone has managed to get in and out of the country without getting sick and being put under quarantine.
That was until yesterday.
I'm hosting a group of 20 American college students for 2 weeks–hanging out with university students, sight-seeing, learning about the culture–and this weekend one of them came down with the flu. Not THE flu, the one that has sent the world into a panic, but the regular, run of the mill, flu. The doc at a western clinic in town put her on some meds and suggested she be quarantined, which we have done….in my apartment. Yesterday she and the co-leader of the group snuck out of the hotel they were staying in (we didn't want them to know she had the flu) and moved to my place. They'll stay here until Saturday afternoon, while I take the rest of the group to Xi'an, from where they will leave the country. Our goal is to get the patient's fever down before she has to board a plane.
It's rough for her to be trapped in my place because she was so eager to see Beijing, but she's being a trooper.
Never a dull moment in The Jing!