So are you ready for the horror story…I doubt it.  Better take a seat.  After an enjoyable and restful 24 hours on the overnight train to Beijing, I found myself staring up into the foreboding fluorescent dental chair lights.  It was supposed to be a simple filling.  (Notice that the word ‘supposed’ in that last sentence was in italics.  This is intentional.)  As I white-knuckled the plastic dental chair armrest, I was flanked on either side by three or four Chinese "dentists".  They were masked so I couldn’t verify if this was their true profession; I suspect they were really escaped Nazi war criminals who found convenient asylum in the shadowy halls of dental clinics around China.  It wasn’t the tarnished instruments that first caused me to question my decision as much as it was the suspicious lack of Novocaine injections on the table beside me.  In my 3rd-grade level Chinese I asked a few times about the Novocaine, but I only got re-assuring nods and incomprehensible grunts.  It wasn’t until the drill actually shot shooting and spitting pain through my tooth and entire body that I shouted…

(GOTCHA!)

Yeah, most of that first paragraph was totally FALSE.  Scary sounding, huh?  But fortunately ALL fabricated.  Thought I would pull a fast one on a few folks.   But you guys are all probably too quick to fall for a lame story like that eh?

True story:  I did take a 24-hour train to Beijing.  I did see a Chinese dentist about a filling.  The dentists were all wearing masks, but were also all way too young, way too Asian, and way too polite to be Nazi war criminals.  I DID get not one but THREE Novocaine shots which made my mouth numb.  What can I say, I’m a wuss!  The dentist kept asking if I could feel the dental instrument poking my sensitive tooth. 

It went something like this.  Shot #1 administered.  Can you feel it now?  YES!  Shot #2 administered.  Can you feel it now?  YES!  BIG SHOT #3 administered.  You probably shouldn’t eat for a few hours after this.  We don’t want you to bite that thing that you might think is a dead halibut in your mouth.  It is actually your tongue.  Doh-Kaahy.

I still can’t believe the previous pain in my tooth wasn’t a raw nerve hanging out.  The dentist assured me that it was only part of my filling that had come off.  She filled it back in no problem.  My jaw ached for the rest of the day because of that last Novocaine shot, but I wasn’t complaining because I could chew on the right side of my mouth again–without weeping.

The big bad news of the day was when the dentist mentioned I needed to get braces if I wanted to have my teeth remain into old age.  Now I’ve been given this advice by dentists from three different countries!  Great!  Kind of makes getting a second opinion obsolete.  I keep trying to explain that I’ve already had braces.  It didn’t work.  Been there, done that.  But for some reason they don’t like that excuse very much.  I guess I’m going to be a 40 year-old sporting a metal mouth (for the second time in my life!)  Someone shoot me now…

Beijing was nice, but I was only there for twenty-four hours before I hopped back on the train to Xining.  I had time to grab some fast eats, McDonalds, Subway, Starbucks and Orange Julius.  And, to top it off, I squeezed in a late movie, Pirates of the Caribbean 3.  That movie would NOT have been my first choice when I get to the theater so infrequently now, but it was the only thing playing at the theater nearby AND it was in English.  You know what they say about choosy beggars.

Unfortunately in the 72-hour period I was away Sarah was sick and cranky, Christa caught a nasty cold too (while in the midst of planning the teacher’s appreciation event for Anna’s school which happened this afternoon!) and my friendly internet service provider here in the Middle Kingdom decided arbitrarily it didn’t like my blogging tool, i.e. Typepad, anymore.  Fun, fun.  Now, I can’t see my blog online (even though I am still able to publish it.)  Well, I can actually see it, but it takes some online maneuvering.  Anyway, this "welcome home" was enough to make me want to hop back on the train for Siberia.  Well, maybe that’s a bit extreme.  I’ll nurse ’em back to health and the tooth’s better which makes me a happy man.  You know what they say, "All’s well that ends fills well."  Thanks for all the sympathy votes.