Sunday, August 19, 2018
8:30 p.m.
Beijing, China
Hello, Everyone!
Don’t you love how well I have kept this blog update? I wrote so many posts during my first year teaching kindergarten. I told you so many great stories. Remember the one where so-and-so did that one thing. Classic.
Okay, in all seriousness, sorry about lack of communication. Hopefully your are a friend of mine on FB and saw all of my FB live videos. But now that I’m back for my third year in China, I’m going to try to be good and keep this blog updated (at least semi-regularly). I know I didn’t tell you many stories from last year and I really don’t think there’s a good way to rectify that. So I’m just going to apologize and continue on. So sorry.
Alright, so let’s move on. I’m back in Beijing! I had a legitimate summer vacation, only a month and a half long like a normal teacher’s break. It was great! We had a ton of fun and did way too much. It felt like I didn’t have much time to just relax (although I actually did). We were busy every weekend, going to New York, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc. When the family wasn’t doing stuff, I was visiting friends and family, basically catching up on all the stuff I had missed. Fitting nine months into 6 weeks meant that I was constantly on the move, but I wouldn’t have changed any of it.
But now I’m back in China and this time has been surprisingly harder than the past two times. I think it’s because in the past I’ve always been headed into a new adventure and with a new adventure comes excitement. Not that I’m not excited for this year, but it’s just not the same kind of excitement. I also came back before any of my friends did, like a good 4 days before, so knowing they were all still with their families and I wasn’t didn’t help. To top it all off, I returned back to my apartment to find that mice had been hanging out there over the summer. Luckily, my ayi (the lady that comes to clean my house; her name is Miss May) had been there the week before and had warned me, so at least I wasn’t caught completely by surprise. Still, though, it wasn’t exciting to come back and have to deal with that.
Fortunately, Abba has surrounded me with amazing people! The first night was pretty tough because I was all alone in a gross apartment and completely exhausted, but I was able to talk to both my mom and my Aunt Kim and they helped keep me sane. The next day, I was talking to my head of department (Bethany) about the situation and she offered to let me stay the night at her place until I felt comfortable at my apartment again. So I’ve been staying with her the past few nights. Yesterday, Miss May and I deep cleaned my apartment and then I went and hung out with Brian (yeah, I’ll talk about that in a minute). And then today I was able to go to ch—ch and just have a pretty chill day. Honestly, today has been the first day I’ve finally felt kind of normal again and it’s wonderful.
And just so you know, I have seen no new evidence of rodents since I’ve been back. I set up tons of traps (I think I have like 14 sticky traps out) and have not caught anything. I have also not seen any recent poop or other signs of rodent activity. In addition to the traps, I have put all of my food into plastic boxes with lids and lined (most of) the openings in my house with steel wool. Also, you know that theory that mice are deterred by the smell of peppermint? Well I have peppermint essential oil that I went ahead and put in my big humidifier in my bedroom to try and keep them out of at least that room. Then Bethany gave me an old one of hers to put in my living room, which then reminded me that I have a tiny humidifier that I brought with me from the US when I first moved to China. So now I have a humidifier in each of the rooms in my apartment, each filled with peppermint oil. I’m sincerely hoping that the mice will be like, “Oh no, peppermint oil! We better stay away from that apartment. Let’s go bug the people in building 26.” Sorry people in building 26. ? And, before everybody tells me to get a cat, it has been considered, but I’m really not a cat person. I may borrow a friend’s cats for a few days to just scent up my apartment, but I don’t think I’m going to get a cat of my own unless this continues to be a huge problem.
I assume you noticed that I mentioned Brian earlier. Now, I know it’s been a while, but If you can recall my last post, Brian left China shortly after returned last year. I haven’t seen him at all in like ten months. Thankfully, Brian decided to come back to China and was actually able to get a job at my school! So, though we are not actually working together anymore, I will now get to hang out with Brian again! So you all can look forward to more Brian stories this year. Hope you don’t mind.
Okay, so that’s pretty much it. There’s my update for this return to China. Hopefully I will continue to post on this blog. I’m setting myself a calendar reminder for every Sunday at 8pm (8am EDT). I’m also going to add my dad to it so that he can help keep me accountable (Thanks, Dad!). So, if all goes as planned, you should have a new blog post from me every Sunday. If I’m being bad and don’t stick to my schedule, feel free to yell at me over social media ?
I hope you all are doing well and have had a wonderful summer. If you live near Chillicothe and I did not get to see you while I was home, I’m very sorry I missed you and I hope you can forgive me. If you feel like it, please feel free to shoot me a message with a little update on how your life has been. I’d love to hear from you!
Talk to you all next week (I mean it)!
Kristen
P.S. Sorry about all the parentheticals. I felt the need to explain a lot in this post.
