don't let the bed bugs bite!!!

(a cup full of amazing) so i was in manila for 5 days. wow. starbucks everywhere--they have definately taken over the world, but it's fantastic -- i've had 5 coffee's already. The reason that the peace corp flew me up there wass to do language interviews. i represented all of the ilonggo speakers, yeah, i pretty much suck, so still trying to decide why they chose me. my last interview was in english actually. i nailed it. our language instructors had to be certified in their english interview skills. i was more than happy to speak english with them. it's funny though, even though they are speaking technical english, and i can understand the words -- the meaning of what they are trying to say or ask is totally lost in translation. example: "how do you find that place?" -- i gave directions stating how to find the place -- what they were really trying to ask is--what do you think of that place. Filippino english is definatly different than american english. Anyways, it was a free trip to manila and i had alot of fun. now i am back, and it's life as normal -- well as normal as you can get here. i have bed bugs. i thought bed bugs were just a myth, something your mom says at bedtime when your'e little. "good night and don't let the bed bugs bite". wow - they are totally real. at first i thought that i had hives from some allergic reaction, but everytime that i leave the house for a couple of days they go away. coincidince, i think not. it's not so surprising, since we wash our clothes and bedding in rain water collected outside in garbage cans. hmm. so i bought a can of raid in the city, and sprayed my bed with raid, trying to kill everything. i just hope that sleeping in a cloud of raid doesn't kill me too. anything is better than sleeping with bugs, and being covered in red whelps. on a lighter note, the rainy season has left my room coated in mold. everything i have has a layer of green mold growing on it -- so last week i took all of my clothes out and washed them. i also found some clorox wipes and scrubbed my room from top to bottom. and then sprayed the place with anti-bacterial, mold killing lysol. i feel like i live in a toxic waste dump now -- raid, clorox and lysol coating everything in my room. but i guess it's better than mold and bugs, right. hmmm. we'll see.