Well, we're here. It's been a long few weeks. I never know the day nor date anymore. Here's what we've been up to:
Before we left, we stayed with a lovely family that let us take over their basement. They are so sweet to us. And we were happy to still have some space of our "own."
Then we headed to Colorado for 1 week of intense training. We were basically in class 8-5, cramming lots o' stuff in our brains. It was exhausting. We stayed at the CSU dorms. That was weird to be back in the college atmosphere--especially with a husband and child! Josiah was a little thrown off, but did ok. By the 4th day, he was back on schedule..sleeping in his mini tent.
Then we hopped on a plane, headed eventually for China. We had a layover in Chicago that seemed to last forever. Little did I know the plane ride we were about to endure would seem to last eons. It was 14 hours long..some of the longest hours I've lived. We put J in his pj's since we left at 10pm our time. He was tired, but I had a feeling he wasn't going to sleep well. He's never been the greatest at sleeping in random locations. But, he had his own seat, so we were hopeful. He did sleep quite a bit..but only 45mins-1 hour at at time. He'd then wake up and cry for 10 mins..uncontrollably. Poor kid...and poor people around us who were trying to snooze! He threw up once and by the end of the ride had a fever. Great. But, we made it. His attitude and demeanor totally changed as soon as we got off the plane.
We got to Beijing around 1am local time and finally got to bed around 3am. We had to get up at 8am to start the day with class/meetings, etc. Wow. That was 4 days ago. We're all doing much better sleep-wise now. We tend to go to bed around 9 and get up at 5 or 6. The sun rises at 4.30am because they don't do daylight savings. Awesome. :)
We've had many adventures so far, but I'll save some of those stories for later. Of course, ordering food is always hilarious because we're usually pointing and attempting some sort of international sign language. Haha. I will share one story, though..just to give you a nice glimpse of a foreigner's life in China:
We've been on the hunt for a stroller for a few days now. We opted not to bring one from home since it would be just another thing to carry, and we thought we'd be able to find a nice one here. Wrong-o. We went to a mall (biggest one I've ever laid eyes on) and saw some ranging from $150-$1,000. Yep, that's right. So we went to a baby store. They were cheaper, but they also looked cheaper. We saw one that was a possibility for $70, but weren't convinced. We went to another store today, but still nothing great. So we went back to the baby store to get the stroller we sort of liked. While we were picking up a few other things, the lady who was helping us came and said that actually the price was $90. Uh, what? We asked why, but couldn't understand her. Remember, our Chinese is very limited. :) We did call a Chinese friend, and all we could get was that this was a "new model"....aka....they knew we were foreigners and would probably pay the higher price. And we did..because we're tired of carrying around the little man. Let's just hope it stays together for a while!
Sorry it's so long. I'll try to update more often so you don't have to read novels. And I'll attempt putting pics up, too. So far, not many have been taken. I'll work on that, too!
