They Can Climb!

I just came home to find three baby cockroaches scurrying around my kitchen floor. Whenever I turn the light on after coming back from work, I wait a few seconds to see any movement and then decide whether it's safe or not to come in. Today was unsafe.

One of the many reasons for choosing my current apartment is that it can be found on the sixteenth floor. Surely the cockroach wouldn't bother to climb to such extensive heights, just to terrorise me? Well, they do. I guess they come up through the pipes, in elevators, on shoes etc. Luckily they've never made it to my bedroom and only once or twice to the bathroom. Under the kitchen sink seems to be the current hang out right now. I think it's time to invite the 9RMB an hour cleaner to come back to the apartment again.

(Above) He Hua Lu (Lotus Flower Road) (Left) He Hua Da Sha (Lotus Flower Building), my home. Don't be fooled by the sweet name, the "roaches" are still there.

For the first time in a couple of months I had an easy day at Web today. I only had two classes and two English Corners (I taught them to play card games). For any who don't know, the English Corner, or "Social Club", is a class where any amount of students can attend. It consists of the "foreign" teacher standing at the front of the classroom talking and talking and talking about any chosen subject for one hour. The aim is to get the students speaking to the teacher and to each other in English -- the reality is very different. I don't know exactly what it comes down to: shyness, embarrassment, boredom or misunderstanding, but some students will not speak to save their lives. They have spent a small fortune to study at Web so it strikes me as completely insane that they don't want to make the most out of every opportunity to speak English.

Although the EC can be a killer, today was a good one: there were less people attending, most of them were my favourite students....and we were playing cards. I wish I could get away with doing this every week.

Kimi had her hair cut today, "Ta de tou fa hen piao liang".