Day 7: Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite...

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There was a rumor that some people were getting bit by bed bugs, but no one had actually seen one. However, this morning, I woke up and found red bumps all over my face, arms, and legs. My roommate also had bites on her face and arms. We were informed yesterday that we needed to turn off the air conditioning every time we leave the room and to unplug everything because it runs a lot of electricity. When the rooms reach their maximum "electrical output" things will start shutting down, such as hot water running out or the air conditioning will shut off. Camille and I tried to use the remote that was written in Mandarin, but the AC would not turn off so we unplugged it. But then our room began to get really hot and muggy like it was outside. Our room also had this awful musky and moldy smell that we couldn't identify where the source was coming from. We searched our whole apartment and cleaned everything, but the persistent smell remained. I was anticipating the smog and the polluted smell of the air, but the one thing that I was not expecting to be a problem was mosquitoes. The situation isn't problematic when you are outside, but inside many of the buildings, the mosquitoes attack you. The combination of the smell, our broken air conditioner, dozens of mosquitoes in our apartment, and the unfortunate news of bed bugs set the tone for the day. The bed bug situation turned from bad to worse when we actually found one and killed it. Headquarters was informed about our living arrangements and we were moved to hotels for the night. The hotel was in close proximity to our apartments, but it is a much better situation than what we were living in before. Hopefully we can get a deep rest for the night and begin work tomorrow bright and early at 7:30.
View from our apartment (You can see the mountains in the background)
This situation doesn't really phase me because of the incident with my stolen luggage, but for many of the other girls, they appear horrified. All of my stuff being stolen was the worst thing that could have happened to me so some bed bugs cannot ruin this trip. Personally, I think that this is a great learning experience.

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