The Peace Corps Experience I never had

Last night I awoke at 4am with my neck swelled and itching. I had bites on my face too, and a few on my legs and arms. Ned was awake already, (jet-lag) and reading downstairs. I showed him my neck and he said I was covered in mosquito bites. I went to the bathroom and threw cold water on my neck (since that's all we have anyway) and Ned rubbed hand sanitizer on them. The alcohol felt good, stung a little, but stopped the itching. It was a grusome sight to see my own blood on the wall of mosquitoes that we'd smashed. After that, I managed to sleep until 8:30am, got up, poured hot water over my bowl of oatmeal and a big bug floated to the top. Ned said upon our arrival, "maybe this will be the peace corps experience I never had." As Ned listed off the things that were wrong with the apartment, and the mountanious list of things he wanted to accomplish today, I just knew today was going to be one of those peace corps days. We have a leaky cooler, a leaky radiator, a running toilet, the language on our computer is in Chinese, we don't know how to use our telephone, we need screens on the windows, we don't know how to use the TV, not to mention we need to buy sheets and pillows for our concrete bed, the bathroom is "grizzly" as Ned puts it, and needs to be throughly cleaned, and we have construction going on (drilling, hammering) just 100ft. in front of the house.

Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not complaining. It's just one of those days. Hopefully, we can get a lot of this stuff taken care of with Mr. Lin our sort-of landlord, and Sun Pong our noodle friend, before 4pm when Mr. Zhang, my boss-man comes to call and makes his first appearance.