Orange Barf.

I "called in sick" to work today for the first time. By calling in sick, that means 6am frantic text messages to as many students as I have saved in my phone hoping they get the message and don't bike ride the 5 miles to school from their dorms in the pouring rain. I texted the foreign office secretary *just in case* they did a check up on me today, and then texted my co-workers so they wouldn't worry about me when I didn't show up for the bus.

My life consists of a lot of texting.

I then texted my phone company to make sure I had money on my phone and fell back asleep.

For the rest of the day.

I spent the majority of last night barfing up orange puke. I am not sure where this came from because I have eaten nothing orange the past few days that I can recall. I am chocking the whole incident up to bad water and not looking back. The water bottles here are generally pulled out of the trash and re-used by the companies, you can tell because the water goes all the way to the top of the bottle, instead of having that centimeter of room between the cap and the water. I drink water from bottles like this everyday - have for over 16 months now and I have never had a problem. I have had a killer cold recently but that is no reason to randomly start puking your brains out. hmmm. Oh well.

I had a sweet student who I had lunch with yesterday who kept saying she needed to come downtown to see me ad bring me Chin.ese medicine. I was really touched by her earnestness to help me. It really allowed me to see how genuinely kind she is. I felt bad, but I didn't want her making the hour trip on the bus to see me when all I wanted to do was sleep, and there was still some puke around the house I needed to tend to, so I wasn't really keen on her showing up. She didn't understand my, "it's ok" text messages, those translated to "ok, come over" so that was a lesson not to use, "it's ok" when trying to turn down an offer. I had never thought about what that sounds like before. Good lesson.

I feel horrible for missing work, but as long as my superiors don't find out (and they never will) I should be ok. Missing work is like a crime around here, when I missed a few days last semester when I was stuck in Shenzhen with no passport, I practically shook in fear of the consequences! But alas, I realized that no one in the foreign language department has any clue what goes on and my absences went unnoticed. I am glad that I was able to rest today, I am feeling much better tonight.

I skipped out on our first book club meeting, though, and that was sad. Me and 3 dear friends are starting a book club. Because we feel like it. And we want to have intellectual conversations in english, that is something missing from our daily lives as we speak less and less english each day. We are beginning Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger, I can't wait for next week.

Also, reason # 2740928904 why I love my job: I was chatting with an old student online tonight and he asked me, "want to see some beautiful photos?" Well, of course I do, I told him. And fewer than 5 seconds later he had zipped over to me 4 photos of squirrels. Close ups. I find this hilarious. I don't know if its dehydration or what but it is hilarious to me that a 25 year old college student would send his teacher "beautiful photos" of squirrels that he had taken outside. So so so precious. I love my job because I am thoroughly entertained every moment by something random and unexpected.

Walk Slow. xoxo.