Hmmm...

So things sometimes...or should I say frequently...don't work the way you expect them to in China. Last night I was going in and out of my kitchen and when I turned on the light I heard a crackling type sound. I looked up at the light and didn't see anything odd so I ignored it. But this morning when I woke up I looked up at the kitchen light and discovered that the lightbulb had melted through the plastic covering/light fixture thing. Whaaaat. Literally the lightbulb is half in and half out of the light fixture with melted plastic on it. Not sure exactly how that happened (I wasn't using the light for any abnormally long period of time yesterday that I know of)...but I think I'd better replace it. Time to call the Waiban!

And I'm Back!

So I’ve been inexcusably MIA for a few months now with no blog updates. But my belated new year’s resolution (along with many others) will be to write once a week something, anything, so you have something to read when you’re bored. Ha, most likely everyone has stopped looking at this blog so I’ll be writing in vain…but anyways. I actually have internet in my apartment so I should be updating quite frequently…but in reality I am spending a lot of internet time stalking people on Facebook and that just doesn’t leave me enough time to blog I guess. Somehow being in China seems like less of an adventure than Bolivia. Maybe to others China is a very foreign place, but to me it kind of feels like home being that I spent a summer in Shanghai and have been to Taiwan numerous times in the past couple of years (hmm…yes, that last point…well let’s just say based on the vicinity to China it seems not as out there).

I have to warn you though that these blog entries will probably be less well-thought out (you’re thinking…as if they were deeply insightful before?) since I’ll just post as I go instead of spending hours on my laptop without internet connection re-reading to make sure I got most of the grammar correct and didn’t reveal too many obscene details of my boring life :) Strangely enough, the reason I was inspired to write now, after all these months, is that last night I had a scary bug incident and it made me think of my time in Bolivia in my first house when I got acquainted with a few scorpions and the big scary bug that when it splattered it made a big mess. I saw a cockroach last night and so I got out the trusty Raid and sprayed it. And sprayed the area around the kitchen and bathroom. And then came back a few hours later and saw a bunch of semi-dead cockroaches squirming around. And then woke up this morning to 5 cockroaches of different sizes scattered around my apartment in the dying stages. Two of them were even encroaching on my bedroom territory (I think they were disoriented and got lost in their search for food). I did some research online and they said to flush them down the toilet so that’s what I did. But I wonder if spraying that spray and the scent of dead cockroaches attracted more to my apartment. Hopefully not or I’ll have to figure out how to say boric acid in Chinese to really deal with them (supp the most effective way to deal with them). Anyways, I think that cockroaches are really gross…definitely worse than the other bugs I encountered in Bolivia…I’d actually take scorpions over cockroaches. I think my fear of them is how fast they scurry around and they could scurry right up and onto me. But I guess if it came down to mice or cockroaches I’d have to think about it a little more. The annoying thing is that I don’t really keep food in my apartment so I’m wondering why they come here (maybe just to get a drink when they are thirsty). Everything I have is pretty much in plastic packages, I never leave dirty dishes in the sink, and the only things I “cook” in my apartment are ramen and oatmeal. Oh well. I think I need to get over my fear of cockroaches…I literally could not fall asleep last night because I pictured them coming into my room and crawling all over the place. Ick ick ick. Wah mommy wah.

Since I last posted I have gotten well-adjusted (习惯了!) to Panzhihua and celebrated my first Chinese Christmas, New Year’s with shaokao and a bunch of students, went to Chengdu for IST (3 days of training with other volunteers), went to Taiwan for 3 weeks for Spring Festival to hang out with the relatives and my mommy, and most recently gone up to Chengdu to see Kelley who flew in from London. Yup, that was my last two months. Now I have one week before classes start up so I’m busy planning and syllabus writing, etc. along with studying for the GMAT daily since I registered to take the exam in Chengdu on April 9th.

I also became extremely lazy in the past few months and stopped running completely…but then just tried to start a few days ago. 2 miles on the track and I’m sore! Lame. And if you ever didn’t know what muscles you use when you run, I have to say the most sore are the abductors and adductors (weird, you would think quads, hamstrings or calves, but no). Anyways, that’s another one of my things for this semester. So I’m working on being a good teacher of English, learning Chinese, studying for the GMAT, and not being a 胖子 (pang zi – aka fatty!). Which reminds me…one of the tastiest meals in Taiwan was at a little fast food joint called 周胖子饺子…some sesame noodles, dumplings, 凉菜 (a 1000 yr old egg that was actually tasty!).

Okay, that should whet your apetite (har har, no pun intended) for posts to come. Apologies if you wanted to hear about TEFL in China…I haven’t started working yet so I have nothing to talk about…maybe next week :)