The first few nights here consisted of many trips to the grocery store filling up on little necessities. Stuart, Siobhan, and I looked rather like a bunch of freaks as the only white faces in a sea of Chinese people. The people are mostly curious, but the stares do get a little tiring, though I am getting used to it and it is not too bad – a little “Ni Hao” usually puts a smile on their faces and they stop the blatant staring (no, not really – they just keep staring but with a wider grin on their faces).
The rooms dorms are pretty good, but and we have most everything promised to us. No proper kitchen to speak of, but enough cooking gear and a little know-how will make it easy.
On my second night here, after cleaning all the surfaces of the furniture in my dorm, I made some new signs to cover the window to my dorm.
As I was putting up the sign, this not-so-little beast crawled into my room.
I smacked it with my sandal and freaked out a little. The centipede (wúgōng 蜈蚣) looked like it was straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Shaking with disgust I walked into the hallway and saw my neighbor, the computer teacher named Xiao Shu. After waving him into my room to see the monster that lay dying on the floor, he went back to his room, got an empty soda bottle, and scooped it up. He explained that it was poisonous and that a student had been bitten by one earlier in the day. The next day I went to our school liaison and promptly requested they put baseboards on our dorm doors. I have no desire to wake up and have one hanging out beside me.
There are some beautiful hills behind the school, and what appears to be several temples on the top of them. I can’t wait to climb up and see them, perhaps when our bikes have been fixed and the temperature drops a bit.
