Deceptively Blonde

Hi everyone! Sorry for being such an absent friend recently.  Honestly, packing and preparing for the move was absolutely crazy ~ 6 weeks of garage sales and two weeks of all-nighters packing and cleaning and preparing items for storage.  Even so, I don’t think things actually got real until the girl walked away with my bed.  Then for the next week, I was living off the floor ~ sleeping on pillows and makeshift blankets. Between that and no internet since July 31, I was soooo ready to hit the road 🙂  It has been just mind and body-exhausting! 0_0  

We finally finished everything after 72 hours straight working on what was left and we headed out of Iowa City at 4:06 in the morning.  Lol, we were so exhausted we kept having to change drivers to keep ourselves awake. . . we were playing a question game and it took my mom 16 minutes to think through “What is your favorite flower” even though she’s worked with them all her life.  😛  

Then, after an 8 hour drive, we arrived yesterday in Fort Hays, Kansas at the local Sleep Inn.  It’s a lovely hotel, has a swimming pool, hot tub, and we even got a room with a lovely little sitting area ~ perfect for finishing up the last minute law and personal chores before leaving the country.  

One of which includes finding out how to get my medication (got too busy to buy it before).  Anyone know whether you can buy Zantac (Ranitidine), Claritin (Loratidine) and Benedryl in China?  If not, I’ll just pick some up in Wal-Mart tomorrow or the next day. 🙂 

On a related note, you should see how much we brought with us still.  The pile is so enormous, I took a picture for posterity! 

We finally moved down from a filled 3-bedroom home to a truck full coming from Iowa to Missouri. Then we met up with my aunt and further compacted everything into a jeep.  Now, I have to figure out how to narrow it all down to just two suitcases and a carry on. 

A little worried about the carry on, since we are flying with Air China which has a 11 lb limit on the carry on.  I’ll probably be over, but I’ve been told that they are not as rigid about that rule as long as you can pick it up and fit it into the overhead container.  Here’s to crossing our fingers. . . . 🙂

We were very happy to get our VISAs and Passports on time last week; several members of the team have yet to receive theirs and they are slowly panicking.  We’ve been told though that everything should work out.  Apparently, a whole bunch of people supposed to prepare and sign the papers for the VISAs went on vacation and it took a little longer than expected to get everything working again.  Still, mom and I have ours so we are ready and raring to go!

We leave Hays, Kansas on August 22 and take a bus down to Denver. Then our Flight Schedule is:

• Denver to Washington DC (August 23, 8:18 am – August 23,1:40 pm) on United Airlines 1297.
• Washington DC to Beijing (August 23, 5:00 pm – August 24, 6:40 pm) on Air China 818.
• Beijing to Zhengzhou (August 24, 9:30 pm – August 24, 11:05 pm) on Air China 1331.

If you look at a flight map, you’ll see that our DC-Beijing flight actually goes over the Arctic!  Mom and I have tickets that are a little unique from the rest of the group since they ran out of space for four of us on the plane that the majority are taking on the evening of the 22nd.  So the four of us get to spend the night in a hotel and then start off early the next morning which should be pretty nice.  

Can’t wait for the exciting moment of stepping onto the plane!  I’ll post photos and keep everyone updated! 🙂

Tags: abroad, education, foreign, Fort Hays State University, Sias, Teaching, Teaching Abroad, Travel