Arrival in Zhangjiasai

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Last night with the help of 2 new friends I checked into a really fancy hotel for $15 a night - pretty steep compared to what I've been paying. I got into the room at 3am as we'd gotten off the train at 2:30am. It took me a little while to get to sleep. Right before I did at around 4am I got scared awake by someone with the key coming in except that I'd dead bolted it. Turned out they'd been given the same room as me and with a call back to the maid I was apologized to and left alone. Very strange again. I'm half expecting someone to come in again. My legs are itching from the leech bites - I have 28 of them. I'm giong to have to get some medicine today. Cam may be giong to Japan the same time I am - we'll just wait and see.

Wow! What a long and exhausting day! I took 4 buses and 2 motorcycles to get to Cam's home. Cam's father and Sayles picked me up on a motorcycle fromthe bus. Every single person at the station was staring at me. I had finally reached a village and there were no foreigners within at least 10 miles of me nor had there maybe ever been. I was completely surrounded by fields. When I first arrived at cam's home I felt a little like his little cousin who was hiding in his room from me and refused to come out for a while. I too was a bit frightened of all the new people but Sayles was there to get me eating and Cam's grandma, who I'd met before, was also there. The others didn't try to talk to me as they talked through Sayles - whose Mandarin was the best and who was a bit used to being around me. Later Sayles left and Chinese Michael's father came over for a bit but he was about as talkative as Michael (so not very much).

When he left Cam's mom took control of me. She took me around to show me the barley fields and veggies they were drying as well as rice all in what looked like cotton rolled up in sheets of bamboo to dry. She took me and my stuff upstairs to my room and I came back down to sit as she made a bunch of dishes. One was extremely sour vegetables, one was fish, one of some sort of chicken, one of peppers and one of green vegetables. They have no sink so she had a bucket of water she constantly used. THe men were kept out of the kitchen to watch TV and I was only allowed to watch. She asked me who she seemed more like and I should have guessed without even blinking Cam was like her and Kast like his father but not only can I no longer use their English names (which is a bit difficult) but her Mandarin isn't that great - half Mandarin, half Hunan dialect (an interesting combo). Only during dinner did Cam's little cousin warm up to me and start calling me "Bai jie jie" or just "jie jie" (white "older sister"). he and I had a bit of fun talking about fireworks and a really big one he'd seen go off. During dinner Rudy's parents came over to visit. Rudy looks a lot like his father. We fed our bones to the cat and dog as we ate.

After dinner the little cousin and I sat together. First I thought he was waiting for some firecrackers to come back but then I realized he was staring at the moon. He's 4 and really cute.

Then Cam's grandma, little cousin and I washed our faces and brushed our teeth and I was escorted by Cam'sm other up to have a bath. After a bath I looked at a whole ton of pictures of them and the boys in Dalian and Beijing and talked to her for a bit - I'm beginning to understand her a bit more. I gave her the scarf I bought her but I'm not sure she was really interested. She's really glad to have me here it seems and at dinner Cam called to talk to her and ask her what she thinks of me. She told me she liked me. (But maybe not in so many words.)

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