encROACHment

Hola.
Thought I'd throw a little Spanish greeting in there tonight...Let me get into it.

Well, the title speaks multitudes this time around. Last blog's title was pretty random, I've had Winnie the Pooh songs stuck in my head for a solid 2 weeks, ergo the "stuffed with fluff" referral.
Tonight's blog deals with the serious encROACHment that has taken place in the past week. Let me elaborate:

First, encroachment by definition: intrusion on, trespass on, invasion of, infiltration of, incursion into, infringement of, impingement on.
Definition in place, let me further explain what an encROACHment is. Simply, it is the encroachment of a cockroach. These cockroaches don't care much 'bout my eating space, sleeping space, or personal space...

Last week, I went to the kitchen to grab a little evening snack of yogurt and mandarin oranges. I opened the door, flipped on the lights, and quickly noticed three things that didn't belong. It's like that song that Oscar and Elmo used to sing on Sesame Street; "one of these things just doesn't belong here, one of these things just doesn't belong."

I saw three over-sized, larger than life, bigger than Texas, wider than the ocean, blacker than the night, uglier than a uni-brow, worse than a kiss from your sister, no-good, dirty rotten, scum of the earth COCKROACHES. They were all in my spaghetti stash. I was not happy or pleased. I grabbed the nearest thing which happened to me which happened to be a spaghetti strainer. I MEANT BUSINESS. I wanted dead roaches. I tried to get them in one fell swoop but they were far too fast. Two shimmied up to their corner-hole house and one lucky sucker escaped behind the air conditioning unit right before I could annihilate him. Suddenly, I wasn't as excited about my yogurt and mandarin oranges.

The same thing happened the following night. However, I was a bit more prepared and anticipated the movement of one of the smaller, dang roaches. He was toast. The other two escaped. In a nutshell my kill count for the kitchen is 2. I think there might be one more stinker running around.

Then, two days ago, the unthinkable happened. I came back to my room to take a shower. I had two shirts on; one long sleeve and then a shorter sleeved over top of that...I took off the first shirt and felt a DANG old roach in my hair!!!! I flipped out. Luckily, I had my shirt in hand and quickly swatted that such and such. I still don't know where that thing came from. It really seems like it was between my shirts but I don't know how that's possible. I don't really want/need to think about it. All I'm saying is encROACHment needs to stop!
My kill count is up to three. Here is proof in high quality:





On a brighter note...

Tonight was super good. We met a woman named Amanda. She graduated from Spring Arbor and spent a semester at the kindergarten 6 years ago. She was the Spring Arbor pioneer to Japan. Anyways, she has spent the last two years teaching English in China and is on her was back to the States for a 2 month vacation. She stopped in to visit and we got to eat sushi tonight with her and just talk! It is really refreshing to talk...Anyways, she was great and gave us a few pointers and memories. Also, she brought books. I am so happy and grateful. English books here are hard to find and expensive. Because I left in such a flurry, I only packed two books and have really needed some new material. I am so happy. I dug into The Life of Pi tonight and am seriously digging it. It won some pretty prestigious awards a few years back... Anyways, here are 2 pics from us doing some damage at the sushi bar:


"You like it fresh? Let me fillet this guy for you real quick."


krista, sarah, me, amanda, katoko. sushi=happy faces.

hey thanks for reading.

mike