Recent Excitement

Last week I went to bed, turned off the lights and prepared myself to fall into a nice sleep. Then I heard a noise. I always here noises, since I live a the school and I swear these kids never go home. But this time I heard something closer. I've heard from other teachers that if it's quiet enough at night they can hear cockroaches crawling on the floor. I knew that whatever it was I was not going to be able to sleep knowing it was there in my room. As I got up to turn off the lights, I must've startled it, cuz I heard a loud squeel! That scared me, so I leaped out of bed, turned on the lights and looked all around for the culprit. It was a little ugly black mouse-like thing! I'm glad it wasn't a cockroach or a rat. So I called up Martin, and he came armed with a broom to help me get rid of it. We loured him out, then Marting sweeped it accross the room where it flew and knocked up against my closet like a foot away from me! Aah!! Then he smashed it into a nasty pancake. It's the most excitement I've had for a while, so I had to tell you!


Friday night Arthur got some extra free tickets for Brenda and I to go with them to a concert. It was pretty cool, but deffinitely culturally challenging. It was a concert celebration for the local university. There was some fantastic singing and dancing. I loved the dancing especially. They were so creative in the costumes and choreography. Some dances were like balet with many gils on stage, others were more modern. It was quite enjoyable. There's a couple from the Ukraine that teaches music at the university and they did a dueling piano piece. It was fantastic. So enjoyable. But the people in the audience were driving me nuts! Now I know where my students get it. In the States we would be totaly silence in a concert hall listening to classical pieces and watching ballet. But this crowd was chatting away with eachother, cell phones going off. It was unreal how (in my world view) disrespectful they were. But it just goes to show, I'm not in
"Kansas" anymore. As if I hadn't already figured that out. There's plenty of things that remind me.

Since Nigel has passed away (by the way there are some government dudes going through his apartment right now) things are not as active and cheerful as they were. We haven't gone bowling since, haven't played volleyball, haven't done TaiChi, haven't had a Chinese lesson, haven't gone to our restaraunt, haven't hung out with my students. Soon things will pick up again I hope.

Yesterday was the coldest day here yet. It got down to less than 45 degrees! It's so strange, cuz just the day before I was walking around like it was summer. Now I feel so cold! It feels colder, because there is no where to escape it. Nothing is heated. I am sitting in my room, freezing right now, as much as if I were to be outside minus the wind chill factor. So yesterday morning I woke up with a cold. I was not prepared. All I had for blankets was a sheet-like thing. So yesterday I went shopping for a nice blanket. And I slept so cozy last night. And now I'm filling up on vitamin C trying to nip this cold. I spend quite a lot for the blanket, but it's nice and heavy.

Last night I listened to some Christmas music on KTIS (I can get it through the internet, yay!) and decorated my bonsai tree! It's like my own little Charlie Brown Tree, seeing as how all the leaves fell off. I am missing home so much during this holiday season.