I was not ready.

Well. I knew that my room was really dirty, but I got a big slap in the face the other day. I had cooked rice the night before, and I left it in the rice cooker to cool down (so it didn't heat up the inside of the fridge). Anyway, I forgot to put it away before I went to bed, and what is worse, I also forgot to put the lid on, so it sat open all night long. In the morning after I woke up, I went to get some rice for breakfast and as I spooned out the first I a cockroach scampered out from under the pot, and headed for underneath the TV. I had only been awake for moments, and I was really not ready to see a mouse sized cockroach (it wasn't that big but the only 'vermin' I've had experience living with before have been mice, so I thought this was a mouse at first too) run out from underneath what would soon be my breakfast. Because he was under the TV, I didn't feel like I had much hope of a successful attack, so I finished making breakfast, and retreated to my couch. I had been eating for a few minutes when I saw him slowly, maybe even casually, making his away across the floor. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, Freedom of the Hills (700 page fatty 'bible' on how to climb) and tossed. It was a beautiful high arching rainbow shot, that landed squarely. Actually, as I threw it, I thought I might have missed, but then I realized that I hadn't seen it make any last minute sprints for cover, and that the book was propped up on something. So I went and stepped on the book for good measure, and heard the poor fellar crunch. I wasn't ready for the crunch either, but I probably should have expected it. I think it sort of comes with the territory. It wasn't until a few hours later (while I was in class) that I realized the cockroach had probably been running all over my rice, pooping or peeing or eating or whatever it is cockroaches do. It made my stomach turn, but I experienced no real stomach aches or troubles of any kind. Later I talked to my one-on-one teacher about it, and apparently cockroaches are fairly common here. I asked her if cockroaches carried diseases like ticks and mosquitoes, and she said that some did. Apparently when she was a kid, her parents told her, whenever she killed a cockroach, to always be sure to close her mouth, to be sure none of the guts sprayed into her mouth. So I went home and sanitized the cover of Freedom of the Hills. Just for good measure.