Sorry for the delay!! I’d like to take this opportunity now to describe the
general setting of where I live and the typical places I go to. It may be
important in future stories.
Longzhong Campus:
This is where I live. There are two campuses of Hubei
University: the Longzhong campus where they teach Arts and Sciences, and the
Ligong campus where they teach Science and Technology. I live on the Longzhong
campus and teach at the Ligong campus (only three other teachers out of the ten total teach at Ligong with me). To me, I think they are both equally
beautiful in their own ways, but I think most people (and most certainly you
too when you see the pictures) would say that Longzhong is by far the
prettier…it certainly is the most classically beautiful. Because we live a
little above the base of Longzhong mountain, the area is covered in trees. It’s
very dense because of it and you can’t see the sky as much. But there are
Chinese statues of ancient people scattered about the campus, as well as a
large pond just a little distance away from the front gate. If you stand at the
front of the pond and look at all you see in front of you, the scene is
absolutely perfect. It’s as if it was purposely structured in that very
position, and honestly I think it was. It’s like a painting. The lake is at the
bottom of the picture and behind it a small lawn. Behind that are a dense
amount of trees and behind those in the way distance is a large mountain
looming over everything. On top of the mountain is a pretty pagoda. The picture
is gorgeous. I live far at the very back of the campus, almost as far as you
can go in what they call the Old Campus. You have to walk through the front
gate, past a small street with a ton of restaurants and snack places on it we like to call Food
Street, past the lake and a small park around it, past student dorms, past
basketball courts, a soccer field, and a gym, past teaching buildings, past
another set of restaurants, past several other similar small apartment
complexes, and then you get to mine. It’s a very interesting walk, and
sometimes you can hop on this interesting looking small yellow bus that looks
like a very long and big golf cart (we call it the banana boat), and catch a
ride 2/3 of the way back. If you can’t, though, you must endure a 30 to 45
minute walk of Chinese people staring at you all the way.
My apartment consists of a living room and dining room area,
a kitchen, a bathroom (which has a western toilet now and no stoop, and the
shower has a shower head now instead of a faucet…but it still is just a shower
head without a tub or a distinct shower…the bathroom floor is basically the shower),
a teeny laundry room (and I mean a small chamber that is only big enough to fit
the washing machine (we don’t have a dryer), an office, and a bedroom. It’s
bigger than what I need for myself, I was perfectly content living in the teeny
room I stayed in in Kunming with my roommate. However, it has grown on me once
I cleaned it up to the best of my ability and put my posters up. It looks much
more homey now. My bat Flower has flown away, as I mentioned before, but now I
have discovered two geckos residing in my curtains. I’ve now named them Iggy
and Ziggy. They come out to play in the middle of the night, but if I’m ever up
in the middle of the night I like to switch the lights on and catch them
wandering around my ceilings. I leave the light on for two minutes, and they
scamper back into the curtains and stay there for the rest of the night.
Party’s over.
And now, I’ve decided to start cooking stuff more. As much
as Chinese food is yummy, when you eat it every day and there’s no choice of
having anything else, you do start to miss the stuff you’re used to. I’m
missing things I rarely eat normally, like nachos or bread and cheese. There is
almost NO CHEESE in China. I mean, that’s an exaggeration…there is cheese, it’s
just not sold widely in the main stores. Or butter either. And once I get some
butter and cheese (they sell it somewhere, I know they do, or else how else
would they make pizza?), I’m going to make pancakes and scrambled eggs. But I
can’t really cook a whole ton, because I’m on a budget and I’m trying to save
up money while I’m here. If it’s a success, I’ll take a picture of it and post
it! But pancakes here may end up being crepes because they don’t have baking
powder, only yeast and I’ve never made pancakes with yeast as a substitute.
PICS!!!
There are chickens walking all around where I live. They say roosters only crow at the crack of dawn...not true. They crow ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT too.
In the distance is a pagoda on the mountain where the famous Zhuge Liang (battle genius) spent part of his life. On holidays this place becomes a huge tourist attraction and people come in swarms.
This is such a great photograph, because even when the sun just moves ever so slightly, you get a whole new scene. I took this one maybe a minute later.
More of the Hubei University of Arts and Science Longzhong campus. That's a teaching building in the distance.
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