Another Tuesday and it felt a bit more routine with classes as usual. After all that happened the previous weeks, routine days sounded very enticing. Still, my bites/spots continued to bother me and didn’t seem like they were getting any better. In fact, they seemed to had gotten worse! That meant a doctor visit was in store for me. Luckily, class was pretty interesting, so I was able to take my mind off the itchiness.
October 29, 2009
10/05/2009 – Day 44 – BUGS!!!
While studying for Chinese, Fanny suggested that maybe my bug bites were from bed bugs. Paranoid, I checked my bed before going to sleep and there were things moving around. Very tiny, but still moving! UGH! In panic mode, I looked up what bed bugs looked like and how to get rid of them. In the end, I dry cleaned some clothes to kill the bugs and moved what I needed into the living room. I slept with my head down on the table for the night and ended up exhausted during my Chinese test.
After talking to Justine, Guo Xiaojie, and Shen Laoshi at school, as well as the maid and landlord, they determined that it wasn’t a bed bug. That gave me some relief. They also sprayed my room with Raid and changed everything except the bed frame and mattress.
I managed to get some relaxation at night when I went out to dinner with friends at Ajisen Ramen. It was pretty yummy. They had some delicious looking shaved ice, but it probably would have required three people to finish it.
I actually slept in my bed at night, hoping all the bugs were gone. Unfortunately, I was still pretty shaken by the thought of bugs and ended up inspecting my bed and sheets.
10/04/2009 – Day 43 – Itchiness
After I got back from Chengdu, I thought I was done with that trip. Unfortunately the bites (or allergic reactions?) that I got during the trip continued to get itchier and became really irritating. It’s almost a sure thing that I got them from the dirty, roach-infested hotel at Emeishan. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that bugged me while I was sleeping. I got attacked by a pair of mosquitoes that bit me seven times and kept buzzing past my ear. I had the last laugh though, since I ended up killing both of them.
I went back to sleep and woke up pretty late in the afternoon because I was so tired. All I did was HW and study for Chinese. Wei also visited and we shared pictures (my Guilin/Chengdu photos and his Hong Kong photos). Made me really wish I was in Hong Kong already…
10/03/2009 – Day 42 – Shanghai, home, sweet home
After Guilin, I didn’t think I would miss Shanghai so much. Chengdu wasn’t a good experience, partly because of luck, partly because of our poor planning. We should have never went on a tour, since we knew it had a pretty good chance of being terrible. But alas, we did and at the very least, we have a great story to tell.
Anyways, we got to sleep in a little before we headed out to the airport. Luckily for us, we were able to hire a van for the same price that two cabs would have cost, which was nice. The whole group stayed together and it was convenient for all our luggage. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport because we knew how bad traffic could get in Chengdu. To our surprise, traffic didn’t slow us down one bit and we got there early. Actually, we got there so early, the guy at the check-in counter wouldn’t let us check-in!
10/02/2009 – Day 41 – The tour from Hell
How do you know when a hotel is dirty? When you wake up and you see a giant roach crawling around. Nice. We couldn’t get out of there any quicker. Unfortunately for us, the tour didn’t get any better. It seems luck wasn’t on our side for this tour because the tour just got worse. And the tour lady wasn’t even around for the second day…
Why was it so bad? Well, let’s start with the weather. It was raining and we were on top of a mountain. This meant it was wet, cold, and foggy. We could barely see a few feet ahead of us. (Of course, this means I didn’t take a single picture.) We also had a really annoying tour guide. She happened to be my age (20) and she was really short. I think she was shorter than Fanny =O