World War III : Humans vs. Bugs

...and unfortunatly I'm not talking about Bugs Bunny.

I'm not going to lie to you all, my house is quite the battleground. Ever since the rainy season started, bugs of ALL kinds have been invading our house. Every night has become a guessing game as to which bugs will inhabit our humble abode, and we've managed to turn it into a game. Whoever can guess all the different kinds of bugs we will see that day in the house does not have to do his or her household chores the next day! It's great fun. I promise.

We have begun calling the situation in the house "World War III" which is kind of difficult for the 2 Chinese girls to say because they mix up their Rs and Ls sometimes...

So let me tell you about one of the worst nights of this whole thing...it was about 1.5 weeks ago....

It was about 7pm when the rain started. And of course, it wasn't a nice, cool drizzle. No, no, no. It was one of these torrential downpours that lasts an hour. Now, of course houses in Indonesia are not really built all that fabulously, so when it rains hard, you can't hear anything. We were in the middle of watching a movie on Hindy's laptop, and we couldn't turn it up loud enough to hear it. So we abandoned that idea and moved on to quieter activities.

Now, we were keeping the door open because it is so incredibly hot in this country and it's nice when it rains because usually we get a little breeze. Keeping the door open was a huge mistake. I was laying on the couch reading the newspaper, Hindy was listening to her mp3 player in the living room, and Lily and Maksum were working on some Indonesian homework. So there we were, the four of us, all very quietly going about our business when all of a sudden about a thousand of these flying insects swarmed into the house all at once, catching us all off guard.

I actually didn't realize anything was happening, as I was quietly dozing off, but then when I heard Lily's piercing scream, I practically jumped out of my skin. There were so many of these nasty little things that it actually got dark in our house! Not knowing what to do, we all ran into our bedrooms and slammed the doors shut. Of course I got bored in my room after about 10 minutes, so I opened the door and peeked outside into the living room. It was seriously like a scene from some war movie. There were all these dead insects lying dead all over our floor. Upon further investigation, we found that these little guys looked a bit like those helicopter leaves that fall from trees in Autumn. You know, those ones that kids (or Tori) pick up and throw because they fall down to the ground like little helicopters? Anyway, it was absolutely disgusting. Luckily we have tile floors, so we just swept them up with a broom and threw them outside.

About a half an hour later, I went into the kitchen to make a little late-night snack. I reached up into the cabinet to grab a loaf of bread, and as I pulled it down to the counter, a cockroach jumped off of it and landed on my shirt. And I completely lost it. I started jumping around and flailing about as if on fire. The three Polish ppl had come home from the gym at this point, and were all sitting in the living room. Robert thought I was actually on fire, and reached for a bucket. He was about to pour the water on me when he realized I was screaming "kecoak! kecoak!" ('cockroach' in Indonesian). By the time I calmed down, the cockroach was no longer clinging to my shirt and was gone somewhere.

So just a few minutes later, I heard Hindy scream from her room. We all went to investigate, hoping not to find some crazy ax murderer in her bed. What we found was possible worse. There was a ridiculously huge trail of ants leading from her window to the middle of her room, where one of those ugly helicopter bugs lay dead. There might have been a million ants there, and I am not really exaggerating. So, each armed with our own individual economy-size cans of insect repellant, we went after those darned ants. Then we swept them up like the other bugs...

Since that night, there have been more incidents with the helicopter bugs (which apparently are similar to cicadas in that they live underground and come out for a 2-hour lifespan, in which time they must mate and lay eggs. And when they come out, Indonesians rush out after them, to collect them and eat them. I'm not joking. It's disgusting!), we had a frog problem the other day in which there were 3 frogs trapped in our bathroom and we couldn't get them out. And we have a huge, New-York-sized resident rat who comes in and out as he pleases through a hole in the side of our house that the owner says cannot be fixed. Great times!

Okay well I've got to get going now. I have to teach in 30 minutes....

I probably will not get to the Warnet (Internet cafe) before Thursday, so in case I don't, I want to wish all of you Americans a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! And for the Martin family, Happy Thanksmas. I will be thinking of all of you eating your nice, salty turkey and sweet cranberry sauce and deliciously scrumptious pumpkin pie while I am taking a test and teaching 2 classes and doing my radio show. Yea, no rest for Tori on her holiday...So sad!! haha anyway love you all and catch you later!! :)