The 2x4 That Broke the Camel's Back

I can deal with the crazy bus drivers who always start moving before the doors are closed, and couldn't drive smoothly to save their lives. I can deal with cab drivers who don't make the slightest effort to understand my Chinese. I can deal with the cold and rainy weather in winter, and the thunderstorms in spring. I can deal with buildings with gaping holes in windows and doorways that let out heat in the winter, and cool air in the summer. I can deal with all the ugly buildings and lack of green or even open spaces. I can deal with the pollution and less than appealing smells. I can deal with the pushy crowds and crazy traffic (pedestrians do NOT have the right of way). I can deal with not being able to understand anything that anyone is saying. I can deal with sleeping on a bed that feels like a brick wall. I can deal with having to wait three hours for my clothes to dry in the dryer because it's so humid. I can deal with no shower curtain in the bathroom and having to bend over because the showerhead is so low. I can even deal with geckos in my apartment. However, a few weeks ago, something that tested my adaptability started to pop up with increasing frequency.

Cockroaches.

At first they were few and far between, therefore somewhat tolerable. Robert even caught one for me to take to the Kindergarten class during their bug unit. It also helped that most of them were dead. Someone must have been putting poison out because dead, or near dead cockroaches started appearing with increasing frequency after that. I even found one swimming around the toilet bowl the other morning.

Michael found a huge (live) one in the cupboard under the stove when he went to get a juice box. He came running to me, "There's a big one!". I didn't even have to ask about what he was referring. He was right. It was one of the huge ones that I normally only see squished on the streets and sidewalks. YUCK. That's when I began counting down the days until it was time to go home.

Tonight however was the last straw. I was very tired and looking forward to getting to bed early when the infestation started. It had been thunderstorming for the past few hours, which might explain why they decided to appear en masse, in my bedroom at 9pm at night. Luckily, they weren't cockroaches, or I might have just checked into a hotel for the remainder of our stay in Taiwan. I don't know what they were. They seemed like skinny long earwigs, and they were everywhere.

I killed a few using Kleenex before I realized the extent of the situation. That's when I decided to bring out the big guns, in this case, my vacuum, and I started vacuuming them up. They seemed to be coming in from all the cracks around the air conditioner in the window, so I stuffed some more cloths around it and kept on vacuuming. Everytime I thought they were all gone, Michael would point out another one. We spent an hour combing through our room making sure that we had gotten them all before Michael fell asleep.

I, however, was afraid that as soon as I lay down, I would feel one crawling on me, so I went and played on the computer for another hour until I was tired enough that I felt I could fall asleep fairly quickly. I sheltered Michael's face and turned on the light to do one last visual sweep of the room before turning off the light and going to sleep.

Approximately two minutes later, I felt something crawling up my leg. EWWWWWW!!!

I jumped out of bed, turned the light back on and found two more in the bed that I had so carefully inspected just a few minutes ago. After taking care of them, I do another thorough sweep of the room and again turn off the light.

Luckily, those were the last two. At least I never found any more during the rest of my stay in Taiwan. I even unpacked and repacked an entire suitcase that I had in my room to make sure that none were hiding inside.

Dead cockroaches kept appearing around the apartment until the day I left and joined the cemetary of insects inside my vacuum bag. But after that night, I told myself that I was never living in Taiwan again. And although I said that last time, this time I mean it!