the real beginning

I’m living in a dorm again and finally have my own place – pictures to follow shortly.  The Yucai Third Middle school is gated shut, and I live within its fences in a dormitory building specifically designated for single teachers and staffers.  The day was pretty exhausting so I don’t think I can summarize it very well now.  Maybe tomorrow.

In short, though, our school picked up four of us to go to the Yucai School Group.  From there we were each taken by a set of contact teachers – except that for three out of the four of us, our regular contact teacher was not back from the summer break yet, so I ended up being shuttled around by the Third Middle school’s secretary and her daughter, who translated.  I think I spoke more Chinese today than I ever have in my life before, although I realized my gross inadequacy for the millionth time.  Wan Laoshi and her daughter Stephanie have really helped me a great deal and I am very grateful to them – they got my internet working in no time and seemed to pull out random people from every corner to help me in some way (like the IT staff specialist who apparently lives here too) or to just say hello (like the headmaster, whom I met a bit out of turn and shares our surname Fu – something I will bring up with him later when my Chinese is a bit better).  Everyone is very accommodating (the headmaster has even offered to let me use his spare phone, something that I will need to figure out a way to decline) and way nicer than I thought they would be to an ABC like me.  More on that later, anyway.  There’s a Walmart that’s pretty damn insane near here, where I got a few things from, though I’ll return to it tomorrow to figure out more things.

I should go to bed, but before that I should take a shower.  I’m a little intimidated by my shower though.  The toilet is inside it.  I have honestly been putting off taking one for the last hour by pottering around and unpacking bits and pieces.