spiders and my irrational fear of killing bugs

So, growing up on guam I am very familiar with big ass spiders. The biggest one I've seen has probably been about the size of a dinner plate. Me and spiders that hang out on webs are cool. Me and the spiders that run quickly everywhere when they hear noise, not so much. Once at ruby tuesdays after lunch we were in my dad's awesome astro van that doubles as a work van and a good size spider decided to come out of hiding. Because we were a bunch of girls who knew how fast the spider moved we were a little freaked out and chased it right by the pedals never to be seen again. Needless to say it was an interesting drive home as I stomped my feet as I drove hoping to scare it so it wouldn't come out.

Now in south africa I expected bugs, I expected spiders but why do they love living in my room. So far I have seen 5 spiders in my home. Four in my room and one in the dining room, I haven't seen one as big as a plate here yet but larger than my palm has visited. I have made a habit of tapping my furniture in my room to either keep the spiders in hiding or scare them out. Luckily before I crawled into bed tonight I tapped my head board and a small friend came out. He was only the size of maybe 2 quarters next to each other but these spiders look evil. The way their two front legs lay look like fangs and they creepily run across any surface. I hate squishing bugs, the guts and just having to get close enough to smack them just isn't my thing, but I'm going to be living here for two years and I didn't really need raid at the head of my bed right before I went to sleep. I stood on my bed gathered my courage and killed the jerk. I talked to my host parents grandson who is 25 and visits every so often and apparently he has never seen a spider in this house...just my luck