Domesticity.

2 in the afternoon on a cool(ish), rainy Tuesday. I have an open class to teach tonight, aka they videotape it and the parents watch it at the parent-teacher meetings coming up this month without actually understanding a word you're saying. It begs the question, will the blunt unfeeling nature of the Chinese be a good thing in such a case so as to ward off criticism, or will it mean they are worse than North American parents and will say outright - "You suck." I'm thinking probably the latter because if I can get called "fat foreigner" by some random girl as I'm walking down the street then I'm pretty sure they'll tell me what they think of my teaching outright. I'm fairly nervous but I spent the morning planning out tonight's three lessons so I think I should be okay, as long as the kids don't decide to randomly turn on me.

My place was looking pretty scuzzy up until today, well scuzzy for me which is still fairly clean by anybody else's standards. Even so I'm noticing these little red bumps here and there on my body, one on my arm and four or five on my lower legs right by my ankle, plus three on my right foot. I'm praying it's not fleas and is just bed mites or something that will be solved by washing my sheets, but they definitely weren't there last night. Also the cockroach situation is goin goin outta control, I found another one in my bathroom, called Richard in a panic and he told me to swat it out with newspaper then pour bleach down the drain, which I did. I have to buy cockroach traps this week to put under the sink and in the bathroom. There was a third little present on my welcome mat yesterday as I found a roach lying dead on it's back. Now this I could take care of with just a simple shriek and a newspaper shovel.

Sunday night was a bit of a debacle at the Paradise bar down by West Lake, which I visited for a good seven hours with two other teachers. I knocked back about 5 of those super-sized Siwo beers plus a shot of jack that got mostly sputtered out, by the end of the evening (before the puking began) I just remember ending up in a very involved conversation about politics between our table (one republican American, one liberal Australian, one somewhere in-between aka I had no idea what I was talking about Canadian) and the table near ours which was filled with Brits and a couple of English-speaking Chinese guys. Very, very bizarre. At some point I ended up lying on the bathroom floor, throwing up most of my innards and then some! The guys were great though, they waited for me and told me it was fine, Richard even sat on the floor beside me and tried to tell me funny stories from what I can recall. The next morning, yesterday, was pretty terrible and I had to take motion sickness pills and eat plain tea biscuits. I was still feeling while teaching my class last night, blahh, never again.

Tomorrow is my day off so I think I'm going to try to catch the Y bus downtown, which is only 3 kuai and takes you to all the tourist destinations ie. Mr Guo's villa, Wuhan gardens, Leifang Pagoda, etc. I'll save Lonjiang tea village for when Mom is here next week. I also need to pick up some things at Carrefour and see if the cheese has gotten any cheaper. I got a smallish block of Swiss for about 7 dollars (and oh, it was the sweetest seven dollars I have ever spent) and have been slowly but surely trying to savour it right down to the last crumb.

Teaching English has turned me into a bit of a neanderthal when I speak English to anybody here now, constantly over-pronouncing the words and saying "Where...are...you...from?" "what....is...your...name?" even if I'm talking to someone with like a Masters in English. Even worse than this is I'm realizing how bad I am at my own mothertongue: last week I was trying to talk about 'a' and 'an' with another teacher and I couldn't remember what they were called before I finally blurted out, "oh, you know, particles!" (Correct answer: articles.)

Song of the week: Red Flags & Long Nights by She Wants Revenge