Arriving in China

As you can see, we’ve been a combination of too busy and too exhausted to really think about sitting down and writing a blog. And as most of you have noticed, we have successfully managed to access those sites that should be illegal to us. 

Censorship is good for no one!

Let’s backtrack to about a week ago.  After a tearful (in all truth, it was the hardest thing I have had to do) farewell to my husband, who unfortunately had to head to work early on the morning of our departure, I returned to packing frantically.  It was August 26, around 7 AM, when I finally harassed Rach enough to get her out of bed.  Together we took a look about our messy apartment and assessed the situation.  We had four bags of luggage, one duffel carry-on, and a backpack with which to place a year’s worth of clothes, toiletries, medicine, and memories.

Bry's face says, "We own too much shit!"

Around noon, there was a knock on the door.  Suzie and our father arrived at nearly the same time.  Dad helped us load everything into the car, and after another weepy “see ya later” to Suzie and Steven, we hit the road!  I was supposed to help with the drive for more than I did… but I had this terrible feeling that I was going to projectile vomit because of all the crying I’d done over the past week.  Somehow, for 8 months and 17 days, I managed to play everything cool.  Going to China?  Great.  Not seeing anyone you know for months at a time?  Whatever.  You spend the last four years by one man’s side and now you won’t see him for half a year?  Sweet.  BUT THEN- I put in my last day at work, and then all of a sudden it WAS my last day.  The very next day was the 18^th of August, and also the day of David’s surprise party.   The next day was the 19^th… and with a week until I left… it was as if the Freaking Out Flood Gate had been opened.

I cried in the car. I had been crying off and on for days.  Dad drove us all the way past Fortuna and nearly to the One Log Cabin because Bry and I were still pulling ourselves together. Eventually Bry took over driving and Dad hopped in back to nap. Bry and I were on our own for the first time in months. Years? We talked about all the adorable things Steven and David had been doing for us over the past few weeks. I managed to not cry as I told Bry all about my ridiculously romantic dinner with Steven the night before we left. As soon as we were away from everyone, it was easier to keep it together. This theme would remain for a while. (Turns out it’s SUPER hard to leave someone behind that you love. Who knew?)

In anycase, our drive down was uneventful. Dad slept most of the way once Bry and I took over. Once we reached our hotel, the three of us ALMOST ended up sharing a king sized bed (Priceline, why you no explain your rules???) . Luckily, the hotel had had a cancellation and we got a room with two queens.

We really ought to use more legit websites, but whatever.  Dad was very calm about the whole thing, which was nice since we were barely containing the FREAKING OUT.  Everything had gone SO smoothly this time (passports, buying luggage, getting cheap plane tickets, finding a legit job in a foreign country, and acquiring visas to live in said country) that it was clear something had to go wrong soon.  The first hindrance occurred at the airport.  We had loaded up our bags to the point where we had to weigh them on the scales at home to be sure each one was under the weight limit.  Surprise!   Our largest bag was about 12 kilograms over the limit- which, my brain does not think in.  We stared at the man at the counter, waiting and hoping he would translate this number into pounds since, after all, we were still in America.   No luck.  We had to get out of line and move things from the largest bag to the smaller ones.  It took two tries to finally lose the weight.

Once we had finally gotten past that desk, we met a woman who was also heading to Xi'an and would be on our same flight. We chatted once we had passed security, and we have been in touch since we've arrived. She is teaching English at our old university! Once on the plane, we discovered that it was much smaller than our last international flight. We were initially worried, but we had an uneventful flight. We landed in Shanghai 13 hours after taking off, and spent about 9 of those hours in the dark. Who needs to see while they eat their dry sandwich anyway?

Part 2 to come soon!

For Steven

Tomorrow, I will be leaving behind someone I care about very much for an entire year. I made this choice myself, but even still it is going to be a hard one to follow through with. So, to the man of mine that I'm leaving behind, who really only scrolls through the pictures in my blogs anyway, I just wanted to remind you...

Click play before you scroll, silly!

It took  9 years, three months, and three days after meeting, but you finally asked me out on 12/8/09.

It was REALLY nice finally getting to show you how much I like you.

Like by making things like this! (Although, Bry actually made this of her own accord...)

All of a sudden I had a date to everything I had to go to!  Conveniently,
all my friends waited to get married til we were dating.

You may or may not have noticed, by I stare at you a lot. Almost like I find you attractive or something...

I'm going to miss getting to use you as my personal chair at parties.

I'm going to miss seeing you all dressed up.

And I'm going to miss getting to bug you every chance I get.

But the one thing I will never remember is how freaking huge you are.  I'm always surprised.
(Look at the size of your hand compared to my back! )

We've been there for each other for many huge events. 

And you've taken me on every real vacation I've ever been on.

You put up with all of my weird fashion choices.

And I indulge in your amateur photography requests.

I had always wanted a picture like this, though. 

I'm glad you convinced me to join you.

I still love your unique taste. One moment dirt biking, the next sweeping me
away on a romantic weekend getaway to the symphony.

And look at us looking like adults! (Granted we're 24 and 25 in this picture,
so it shouldn't come as a surprise.)

This picture more accurately sums us up, though.

You're frustrating, but you're mine.

What can I say but "We're freaking awesome!"

I don't really have much else to say besides that. I'm going to miss you, Steven. I love you. Forever and a day.

Creationary

Here's a silly video I took of us during David's birthday party up at our parents house. The game is called Creationary. It's Pictionary... but with legos!

I would highly recommend this game. The box says it's great for children all the way down to age 7. While I agree that seven year olds might enjoy this game, I find it highly unlikely that they would be capable of playing.

Japanese Elephantitis

Bry and I are under a month away from our last days of work here in the US, and just about a month away from flying out. We have our plane tickets bought, hotel rooms booked, and every few days we check a few more things off our list of things we need to pack. (Yes, believe it or not, we have packed two suitcases already!)

Considering how much effort we're putting into getting things finished early so that we're not panicking in our last few days here, more and more last minute things keep popping up. We have yet to receive the paperwork we need in order to get our visas. We do have tentative plans on going down and getting them, however. Just yesterday I went in to get my Hep A shot. Here's how that went:

Don't worry, Flanders, I won't show any pictures of needles.

I had received an email saying that it was time to update my Hep A immunization. Great. I made an appointment and went in. I got the shot. It was very straight forward. I needed a prescription written, however, so I had to sit for a while and wait for my doctor to come in. When he came in, he informed me that I did not need the Hep A but I did need the Hep B. Did I want to do that today. Wha??? Why did no one check that BEFORE the shot I'm going to have to pay for? Why did I get an email from a nurse saying I needed to come in specifically for Hep A???

So, I got Hep B. Now I'd had a shot in each arm. It's alright, I'm a big girl. Most people that know Bry and I are aware that we grew up without any immunizations. Back in 2008, when we went to China for the first time, we made the choice to get shots before leaving the country. We'd survived 19 years without them, but we figured it couldn't hurt to do it before leaving the country. We each took five shots a piece on two separate visits. Our arms were so swollen and painful we looked buff. I had assumed that this was because of the quantity of shots we had received, but this was incorrect. Having received Hep A in my left arm, and Hep B in my right, I can now say definitively that Hep B HURTS LIKE A [expletive deleted]. I didn't even want to get up this morning because it was so damn sore, and this is day two.

What I don't get, as someone who never did this regularly as a child, is how on earth this whole thing caught on. You're telling me that everyone in the US has had these painful shots and we still keep doing it? How have we not come up with a better way to do this? Ugh. Science, figure this shit out!

In the meantime, my arm hurts!

Other than feeling sick from shots (which come with plenty of nausea for these girls, at least), we are preparing to take the Typhoid vaccine.  Apparently Typhoid is a real problem when you travel to that corner of the earth.

Typhoid is apparently a strain of salmonella.

And, like salmonella, the symptoms are...

OK, we just started the vaccine!  As I type this, my body is deciding what to do with this pill.  Will I be nauseous (as the package indicates) or will we be the lucky ones... who knows?!  The vaccine is a course of four pills, to be taken every other day.  We have been strengthening our immune systems to prepare for the unknown by surprising them with all these vaccines and tests, and my body has decided to join in the fun by throwing a vicious cold my way just to make things interesting.  I have worked the last six days straight, with tonight as my seventh day.  Normally, this would qualify me for overtime... but those sneaky bastards put four of those days in one week and three in the previous.  *SIGH*  I'm overworked, and tired, and sick on top of that.  Thanks guys!

At my physical last month, my doctor showed me the CDC website so that I could look up which vaccinations we would need for the area of China we're traveling to. Since then, I have been attempting to track down a vaccine for an illness I'd never even heard of before that visit. (Japanese Encephalitis, or Elephantitis as Bry keeps calling it.) I was originally told that I might not even need a prescription for it and that I should try CVS. Well, I tried CVS.

Try Walgreens.

So I called Walgreens. Try the Public Health Department they said. So I tried the Public Health Department. They didn't have it. The phone cut out (thanks Metro PCS) before I could get anymore information from them. My doctor wrote me a prescription. He then informed me that it was a two shot series. We would need to take the shots 28 days apart. The day I found this out was yesterday, July 23rd. Bry and I leave the county August 25th, a Sunday. Even if we found the shot yesterday, it is already too late. Thank you, doctor, for informing me about a thing we could catch but now have no way of preventing. 

Beijing State of Mind

All I have to say is that I sincerely hope that Bry and I can post something this ridiculously awesome about Xi'an before we return to the states. This is AWESOME!!!

Try to continue about your day after watching THAT masterpiece.

As ever, we prepare for our return to China by doing things we will do there... like karaoke!

Our version of Spice Girls' "Wannabe" rocked that joint!

Chumbawumba just would. Not. END.

And of course we ended the night with the Time Warp.

What It Takes To Get To China

Go ahead and hit play before continuing for a more authentic reading experience.

We keep updating you folks on our comings and goings in regard to preparing for China, but a good portion of the record keeping is for our sake.  The last time we were preparing to leave the United States and head off on a China Adventure was exactly five years ago, and we were so excited at the time that I thought we'd remember every moment vividly.  Because of that dumb notion, we only started a travel diary less than a week before we left.  

You didn't need those memories, did you?

Five whole years have passed since we first began traveling through the endless adult world of bureaucracy and medical exams that moving to a new country forced us to take part in.  This involved signing documents swearing we were not forever abandoning America, and getting medically tested to prove that we were entering China fit as a fiddle.The process started just around Christmas of 2007, took about nine months to finish, and only ended once we plopped our butts down on the pretty uncomfortable twin beds the Xi'an International Studies University provided for us.  Unfortunately, we did not document the details well enough to be of much help this time around.  Here is what we remember from five years ago:

APPLICATIONS:

(THEN) We applied to only one school.  XISU.  I suppose we were really hopeful, considering we would have gladly gone to any school in any other city in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Qingdao, or literally anywhere else would have done), yet we only applied to XISU.

Pictured in Archway: Overly Hopeful American

We applied to four American universities during senior year of high school.  This was partially to ensure we'd get in at least somewhere, and mostly because we had not entirely made up our minds on which college to attend at all.  Humboldt State accepted us mere weeks after we'd mailed our applications off, and that sealed the deal.  So, how was it that less than three years after starting college we suddenly became brave (read as: stupid) and confident (read as: cocky) to the point of only applying to one school?  I'll never know.  I believe there is one key similarity between the two, however.  When a friend two grades ahead of me, and whom I trusted, told me outright that Rachel and I were GOING to apply to HSU, and we were definitely GOING to attend it as our university of choice... I had never even heard of it.  I had never heard of Humboldt State, Humboldt County, or anything else in California north of Ft. Bragg.  Naturally, it seemed foreign and exciting. 

I googled "foreign and exciting" to find a funny image and came up with nothing good. Seriously. Google that shit.

We applied and were promptly accepted. At HSU, when our Chinese professor put forth the idea of several of us students moving to Xi’an for a study abroad attending XISU… we were intrigued by the idea for neither of us had heard of the school or the city before. Foreign and exciting? COUNT US IN!

Around two and a half months later we received our acceptance emails from XISU; I still have this email because I am too damn proud of it to delete it.

(NOW) Not wanting to break our lucky streak, we applied for only one job. (Though, to be fair, there weren’t a whole lot of positions being offered in Xi’an.) We completed a Skype interview, and were hired a few days later. After a few weeks, their emails started to sound a little “scammy” and their further requirements from us were “pushy” so we ended all contact with that business. (The final straw was a slew of crazy-negative reviews online from former teachers.) We were briefly worried that may have been our last chance (since we’d only ever needed on chance before) but were rewarded with another job listing in Xi’an. After a lovely Skype interview, we were essentially hired on the spot! Yippee!

No joke, somewhere in Eureka there is an actual man named Ron Swanson.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

(THEN) To be accepted into XISU, we had to have completed at least level one of basic Mandarin Chinese... preferably with a good grade. And, we would be outright accepted if we had taken any more levels than that. Well, we had just finished level two when we applied in December of 2007! This is hard for me to say, but we did not take that class seriously... and even missed the final because of a mix-up while reading the final schedule. Luckiy, the professor was understanding, and she even gave us an incomplete grade for the course as long as we signed a document promising to complete the final upon our return.

(NOW) To be hired as an English teaching in China took very little effort. All we needed was a BA (in ANYTHING... I cannot stress this enough) and a desire to leave America: done and done. OK, in all fairness it was a little harder. We did end up having to take and pass a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification class online. Mainly we just had to FIND jobs in Xi'an first. What? Why Xi'an? Why not any of those other cities I listed earlier in this blog post? Here's why:

How could you say no to this face???

Five years ago we made this kid a promise to return.  We're the Fucking Awesome Team, and we will be reunited.  We met him after only being in China for four days.  We hung out almost every day after that.

MEDICAL EXAM:

(THEN) After not having seen a dentist for a few years, we went to the local clinic and had all our work done over a series of months.  At the very same clinic, we got a preliminary physical done.  The doctor heard me say we were going to China, saw that I have diagnosed asthma, and considered me crazy from there on out.  

Am I the only one who remembers how popular this kid used to be?

Because we had never been vaccinated before (you read that right) we needed a whole slew of shots.  FUN!  Seriously though, two shots in one arm and three in the other.  A month later we needed to get the second round of shots.  Identical.  Two shots in one arm and three in the other.  Ouch.  

I'm not afraid of needles, but I was glad when it was over.  We were working as student housekeepers at the time (cleaning dorms and whatnot) and had to go right back to work when we were done getting poked.  Our arms were sore for a week straight, swollen and warm to the touch.

It left us feeling like this. 

(Yesterday) Today I woke up, had cereal, drank a cup of coffee, showered, and then got my butt back to that very same clinic to get the same physical.  This time around I had paperwork for them to fill out.  The good doctors needed to check me for polio, tuberculosis, mental psychosis, HIV, syphilis, curvature of the spine, and a whole lot of other fun stuff.  She was baffled as she read the papers, but the doctor was a good sport about it.  This time around I only need one shot!  Turns out the Hepatitis A & B twin-shot is a three part series of which I only had the first two rounds.  Oops.  On top of that we had to test me for Tuberculosis, and they drew blood to check for HIV and syphilis.  It was a whirlwind of  poking.  I got the TB bubble test first, and then they drew blood.  When it finally came time to get the Hepatitis A & B shot, I was unable to roll my sleeve up enough... and in a moment of awkward embarrassment... I had to take my shirt off to get the shot.  Lastly, I was prescribed Typhoid pills.  It is a four pill series, upon completion of which one is vaccinated against the disease.  (Wikipedia is saying that the vaccine works effectively in 70 - 90% of  cases... that's good, right?)  Also, you've probably used the phrase, but here's everything you probably never knew about the real Typhoid Mary.

(TODAY) I went in to get my physical taken care of today, and had a pretty cool doctor get to laugh with me over the poor translations on our form we have to get filled out. Looks like Bry and I are going to have to return and get vaccines to prevent this thing we've never even heard of before today: Japanese Encephalitis. Fun, fun.

VISAS:

(THEN) Having virtually no knowledge about how this process works, and without internet in our apartment to do any real research, we set off with Sarah to go get our visas something like two weeks before we were scheduled to fly to China. You are, no doubt, familiar with this sticker?

Who didn't grow up with their parents having this sticker on one thing or another?

Have you seen this sticker in action?

Yeah, we hadn't either.

You can't see our faces, but we're thinking, "Dear god, just let us get our visas without all the yelling!"  We were unaware that because we didn't make it into the consulate before noon that we would have to return the next day to pick them up. Now we know better.

(NOW) We are currently waiting on our director in China to send us the forms we'll need to get out visas. As soon as we get word, we can request three days off work to travel once again to SF to get visas. Instead of staying with Sarah's lovely parents this time, we will most likely be getting a hotel room for two nights. Any suggestions for cheap hotels that don't have bars on their windows?

No joke, if you type "sketchy hotel" into Google, this is one of the options...

Until we get word that we can go down to SF, I guess we'll just keep on doing what we do best.

Just when you thought bocce ball couldn't get any more epic!

The Time Has Come

I know you've all been waiting so patiently, but the time has finally come.

Are you ready?
...


.....


..........



....................................................................






We bought our plane tickets to China!

For some reason this seems so exciting that I have to use gifs to explain my joy. It's not annoying is it?

I knew you wouldn't mind. We bought two plane tickets and booked a hotel in Shanghai for our overnight layover all for several hundred dollars less than our plane tickets five years ago. Aw yiss.

Yeah, Marshall, we're pretty excited, too.