More encounters with our six-legged friends
So, when the insect bite count hit the double-digits, I decided to take action. No more of this “but-bug-spray-smells-so-funky-I’ll-just-spray-it-lightly-I-don’t-want-to-ruin-my-clothes” nonsense. I came to China with three bottles of Off Deep Woods and 35 packets of Bug-X wipes, and if those little buggers (no pun intended) want war, then war is what they’re going to get. I have been, for the past couple of days, little more than a walking cloud of bug repellant. My presence is announced moments before I approach by the sweet yet pungent aroma of Off, and I keep leaving oily smudges on any surface unfortunate enough to come into contact with my slimy, oddly fragrant self. Any bug crazy enough to penetrate the haze of repellent surrounding me would probably drown in the stuff before it got the chance to bite me, but I’ll be darned if I let those impish little things make me any itchier than I already am. And let me tell you, I’m pretty much a walking “itch bite,” as a certain little friend of mine called it the other day.
I think I’ve determined the culprit: a tube of delicious-smelling hand lotion I purchased at the grocery store to try to offset the effects of lots of Purell and hand-washing, which manages to smell both like fruit and flowers and, with my luck, probably uses actual sugar to augment its sweet scent. I’ve been putting it on my hands and then rubbing a bit on my elbows, which are always dry. Right now, though, my elbows are not only dry but in a constant, miserable state of itch right now, since they each have not one, not two, but three super itchy bites on them, and four more in close proximity. I must be to Chinese mosquitoes as deliciously exotic as Chinese food is to the Americans back home – “all the buzz” around town (okay, this time the pun was intended), and everybody’s got to try it at least once. That’s me, the daily special, served up specially each morning for Beijing’s most pestilential citizens. Yum.
On a somewhat more serious note, the three bites on my right forearm are kind of funky-looking. There was a big speckly rash around them when I got them, and now they are sitting atop a sort of bruised-ish-looking raised mound of swollen skin. They itch (what else is new?) but hopefully it’s nothing serious. I won’t scratch them, obviously: I never scratch. I’m going to ask my teacher about them tomorrow.
--- edit ---
Mosquito bites much more normal-looking today (6.23.06). Right now studying for big big test -- v. nervous! more at some point when I don't have eight gazillion new characters to memorize. I'll leave you with the words of my indefatigable, prepossessing, often pertinacious but always 100% awesome little sister:
hello??? HELlo?!?!
*knocks on your head*
*hits your ear with gong, causing it to come off*
*you disintegrate*
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