Month: September 2017

We made it one week. We’ve adjusted to the new time, Alex has started school (which he loves), we went on a mini excursion, it’s been a good week.  

Alex’s favorite thing about school is violin, I haven’t heard him play it yet but I’m looking forward to it!  He made a friend the first day, and has a few more friends now too. Since his school just opened it’s not full yet, the 2nd grade class only has 8 students.  He’s learning his numbers in Mandarin, music class, art class, PE, and next week starts after school programs of ukulele, Tae Kwon Do, and Creative crafting.

We managed a trip to the local Walmart to get some necessities (eventually we’ll start ordering on Taobao and JD.com like everyone else, but not quite there yet).  It was our mini excursion, I didn’t think to take pictures while we were there but I’m planning on a solo trip tomorrow and I will try to remember.   Some things were very typical Walmart and some things were unexpected.

Next week is the National Holiday and we have the whole week off. We’re going to take a staycation and explore a small part of our new town. As good as the food in our cafeteria is, and it really is, I’m excited to get out at try some local cuisine.  I think we’re going to hotpot, Mark’s been hyping this pretty hard so I hope it lives up to the expectations.

It’s been raining most days since Alex and I got here, we had one hot and sunny day (and I got heat stroke). I’m kind of getting used to all the rain, but I could use a break in the gray skies.

I figured I’d close this post out with a couple of pictures of our campus.

Faculty club (not finished yet)

Shot of our beautiful bride (it lights up at night) and the building behind the bridge is the new faculty apartments- that we are supposed to move into by the end of October. We’ll see…

Our clock tower, any time we’re driving through town, I know we’re almost home when I can see the tower.

My silly, rainy day, umbrella loving kid!

Leaving the states to come to China has been a fast hard process.  We decided in mid June that we were going to take the job here, and that started a countdown that seemed to speed up every time we took a breath.   There were countless visits to the Chinese consulate in Chicago, trips to get paperwork in Springfield, back and forth the police station to get papers notarized… and as soon as we crossed something off our list, two more things would get put on.

In addition to getting all the papers in order to get to China, we had to pack all our things and get ready to put the house on the market. I would be remiss if I didn’t take a minute to give a shout out to all my friends who made that possible.  Jonesy- thank you for watching Alex so I could get some work done. Lisa- thanks for being such a good friend, and my first friend in Illinois. Angie- thank you for being a shoulder to cry on and one to laugh with! Amanda- thanks for always being my sounding board when things seemed too much. Jill- Thank you for your support and help with the yard, I’ve got such a black thumb.  I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last month without you!

We spent the summer running around the country visiting family before we left. And if we could have, we would have visited even more people- but there’s always next time.  Alex and I went to  Seattle, Texas, and Mark joined us for Miami, and Minneapolis.  We got to see my cousin get married (and it was beautiful). Not a bad send off for the States.

There is an app that most of you heard me mention over the last couple of weeks called WECHAT.  It is available on App store for iphones and android wechat.   Once you add the app, you can search for Mark and I by name, by email or by phone number (if you search now you will find me, but it will change again after I get my Chinese number).  This is the easiest and cheapest way to get in contact with us, text messages have been a little spotty since we arrived.  Mark and I still have our email addresses and I still have facebook that you can use to contact me as well.