Bed Bugs in Beijing

Hello, friends. It's Saturday night here in China, and I'm currently in the northern Chang Ping District. It's about an hour from where I live, but still considered a part of the city. Even though i'm still in Beijing, it feels miles away. There are no tall buildings, no cars, no buses. It's just farmland. And all of it is still considered part of China's capital. Most people don't realize just how huge Beijing is; it's outer areas reach well past the Great Wall. And according to Samantha Brown, the city is bigger than the country of Belgium. You might ask what we are doing way out here. Well as Dr. Tseng told me, Beijingers like to go out to the country on the weekends. The most popular activity is pricking fruit. And that is just what we did. For an hour or so we went out to a large grove and picked cherries. Now, I thought this would be it, and we would go home after. I was wrong. We then arrived at the home of a local farmer, met up with family friends, and had lunch. Afterwards, we played a game called police and murderers. For those of you familiar with the game Mafia, it's the same. For those of you who aren't, here's a quick summary: a bunch of people sit in a circle, each person takes a card, on the card it says towns person, police, or murderer, everyone closes their eyes and then the person who us the murderer points to a person they want to "kill", he then closes his eyes and the policeman opens his eyes to choose who he thinks the killer is, all of this is done silently, then everyone opens their eyes and discusses one by one who they think the killer is, afterward they choose one member who they think is the killer. If they guess correctly, the game is over. If the guess incorrectly, they keep playing. This proved to be an incredibly difficult game for me, because I had to defend myself or accuse others in Chinese. However I did learn some good vocab like suspicious, gilty, innocent, and liar. After this game we had dinner and then sang karaoke. I don't know why, but Asians love karaoke. I find it embarassing, yet somehow I still found myself singing "Wan Wan De Yue Liang" in front of a thoroughly tickled and tipsy crowd of Chinese adults. After this, I was quite looking forward to going home. I was wrong again. As it turns out, the farmer's house also doubles as an inn. And we were going to stay the night. I did not know this. So, currently I am wearing boxers and a T-shirt that smells like sweat and roast lamb. I am sitting on a bed with itchy sheets. I just got out of a five minute shower (that's how long the hot water lasted). Since I've been typing this, I've killed five very large insects living in between my sheets. And for the first time in my life, I really am hoping that the bed bugs don't bite.