when they flip the switch, please do not stay. i couldn't bear for you to remember me this way.

I am very sick, and, since it is completely socially acceptable and even common here to walk around with a mask covering half your face like a freaking bandit, this is how I protect the neighborhood from my plague disease. I don't actually get the impression that a lot of people are bothered by my constant hacking cough, which maybe has a bit to do with how I got sick in the first place, but I care, okay.

I sort of have stuff to say about Taiwanese beauty standards, but I don't know how appropriate it would be for me to talk too much about them—I think they are messing with me, though. This is like the most insecure I've felt about how I look in years, and I'm mostly bugged by my face, which is something I've been okay with for most of my life! It doesn't help that people here take ten thousand pictures of everybody, thereby forcing me to confront my hideous visage on a nearly daily basis. I HATE IT MORE EVERY TIME I SEE IT MAN.

I'm trying to get into yet another Mandarin class. Unlike all my other lessons, this instructor is way more like what America taught me to expect out of Chinese teachers! By which I mean she hates me inexplicably and hates the way I talk even more. She'll let me know on Wednesday if I am worthy of level four.

My iPod randomly started playing this song. Why do I have it? What is my iPod trying to tell me.

Edit: Oh my god my entire body is itching including the skin on my ears and thanks to last summer I am so paranoid about allergic reactions and my skin is turning red in a very unflattering way what is happening to me AM I DYING.

I THINK I'M DYING.