Ceiling Creature

So this story might be more for my amusement than yours, but you never know. maybe it will be semi entertaining for my old Kortaneti cluster mates at least.

One night towards the end of training, I started hearing a strange scratching noise coming from the ceiling late at night, a strange noise that would consume my last two weeks of sleep, and a strange noise which I'm sure my cluster mates grew tired of listening to me talk about. It was also a strange noise that has made me come to hate the phrase "don't be afraid" because inevitably to my host families, they think that the only reason I am mentioning any animal is because I am afraid, not because it simply annoys the hell out of me, but who knows, maybe it is a common fear here that something will crawl out at you from the ceiling late at night and claw you to death. (When I first found that crab/eight-legger, I had told my family and their first reaction was to tell me "don't be afraid" as well)

(the picture above is a dramatic reenactment)

When the noise first started, I went to sleep soundly. I knew that it was loud enough for someone else to hear it and that the next morning it would be promptly taken care of. Apparently I had forgotten where I was living. About a week went by and it started getting worse, so I casually mentioned that I had been hearing a sound from the ceiling. "oh! There's just a cat that likes to crawl around, don't be afraid." Hmmm, even if it is only a cat...shouldn't you still be worried that there is one crawling around up there? At first it sounded like purring, so I thought Well, it is just a cat but my vast experience with cats is that they do not spend all night scratching, they spend all night and all day sleeping. Though I am known to have really lazy, fat cats, I was pretty sure it was not a cat.


Slowly the purring turned into a buzzing, and I saw some giant june bugs flying around outside my window. Maybe a bunch of them are up there crawling around? Maybe it's bees? It gets to the point where it really bothers me at night, so I decide to ask them to actually do something about it the next morning. The next morning comes, I hop out of bed, armed with some vocabulary I had looked up/asked my teacher for, and I open my door to find some freaky cockroach that looked like it had come straight from The Transformer's movie. I'm totally serious, it came equipped with its own armor and weaponry system, so I called for my host dad to brush it on out of the house. "Don't be afraid, it's gone!"

So at breakfast, I mention there is something in the ceiling. Now, the problem with not speaking a common fluent language is that oftentimes others assume that a misunderstanding is because you are dumb or do not understand what you are talking about, as opposed to the real reason that you merely do not have the vocabulary to explain. So they misunderstand me when I ask what we can do about the ceiling creature, and they reply "Oh, those cockroaches are harmless, don't be afraid, I moved it out, it's not in your ceiling!" Damn. score one for the ceiling creature, all efforts for that day were futile because they thought I was afraid of the cockroach. Which in fact was not a cockroach, but a 'blahblah' and when I asked my teacher (who by this point was amused by all my new ideas for what was making all that noise) what a 'blahblah' was, she had no idea.

At this point, one of my clustermates suggested it was a squirrel or rodent of some kind, they had been told that there was one around the area and in their house which was nearby. Maybe...But no, I kept coming up with a new idea every day. then I kept getting bitten and I went through a short phase of if I have bed bugs I am out of here and asking everyone I knew if they knew what bed bug bites looked like.

Then one night I was awoken to a new sound. Is that a .....a horse? Yes, it was definitely a horse sound. There is definitely NOT a horse in your ceiling, go to sleep, you are crazy. The next night I hear the horse again. Seriously, you = crazy, but I mention it the next morning to my group and teacher. "Now I am hearing horse noises of all things!" "Oh! There is a horse that just moved in to the house next to you, it is right behind your room." Oh thank god, you = not crazy.

Training ended a couple days later, and I moved into my new house, where I quickly discovered the amazingness of frogs jumping around my room, and have since experienced their amazing ability to find any open or ajar door and get in without you knowing for a few hours. (They like to FREAK out when caught in the bathroom and you surprise them, apparently continuously jumping into a wall is their idea of escape)

And then one night last week. Again another noise from the ceiling. Scurrying around and being loud. Maybe it is a cat. No...it is scurrying around and being loud, cats walk quietly. Hmmm...this is not cool. And it was back again the next night. I resolve to get this taken care of immediately and go to the family and say there is an animal living in the ceiling. "Oh, its just a cat! Don't be afraid!!" Believe me, I KNOW that it is NOT a cat.