and the rain continues

we awoke to a beautiful morning - cool and somewhat dry outside! it didn't last. by afternoon it was humid, though not blazingly hot, and by evening it was raining again. however, liz and i made a discovery of utmost importance: across the green (which you can't walk on, and which people actually don't walk on), in the management and economics building, there's a - hold your breath - vending machine!!! even better than that, there's a small, cheap coffee shop with actual sitting space - the convenience store in the architecture building is essentially a medium-sized closet stuffed with food, drinks, and ice cream. if you can't understand how exciting this discovery was, then you're either not an architecture student, or have never been to china. just imagine the following scenario. it's eleven o' clock at night, and everything on campus is closed (everything IS closed on campus at this time...). you have to leave at midnight, unless you want to be locked in the building until 2am, and you need something to drink because you've been in studio all night. what do you do? 24-hours-a-day laverde's is thousands of miles away! well, you run across the green to the next building, and grab a bottle of slightly sweet chrysanthemum tea, and maybe some cookies, out of the vending machine - there's none in your building, and most people don't even know what a vending machine is in the first place. and now you've got fuel to finish your work for the night, before you get locked in the building until morning.

so i thought my mom was being paranoid when she gave me afterbite (the mosquito bite ointment stuff) to bring; i gave it back to her, thinking i wouldn't need it. sometimes i wonder how i can be so stupid - i was about to fall asleep last night when i heard the telltale drone of a lone mosquito. i sat up, put on a long-sleeved shirt with a hood, and sprayed my legs with bugspray. i then promptly fell asleep...only to wake up halfway throughout the night from an itchy wrist. the enterprising mosquito stuck in my room managed to bite the only available space on my body! nasty little buggers. i'm starting to look fondly upon carlislean mosquitoes for their relative scarcity...i don't want to know how much blood i'll have left behind in china by the end of the summer, via mosquito.