Our Treacherous Trek on the Trail in China

          It was the most beautiful two days we have spent in China. Just a two hour drive from our home in Lijiang, there is a place we had already visited-Tiger Leaping Gorge. This time, journeying through the mountains and hills of Shangrila, Yunnan, China, Chris and I saw with our own eyes the beauty God had made. Our hike was treacherous at times, though Chris did not think so. I’m not much of an outdoorsy person but I am learning to love it! We hiked for about six hours each day. On our first day, the Lord let me meet a nineteen year old American girl named Nina that was “dying for some company.” So, for a few hours we got to share our lives and what she was doing here-studying Chinese on her gap year- and I-well you know what I’m doing here. She was very interested and I’m blessed that He gave me such an opportunity in the most unusual circumstances! Joshua and Yvonne are a great couple that invited us to come along. They have been very kind to us since we arrived and we have enjoyed getting to know them. The other couple we were able to travel with is new to Lijiang and it was nice to spend time with them too! We are grateful everyday that we are able to be here in China and are enjoying every moment! (For more photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152650245504401.1073741848.763159400&type=1 )

Giving Thanks in China

  In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.     - 1 Thess. 5:18

   This thanksgiving, we got to spend time with our family. No, we did not travel back to America, but we are part of a much larger family than just our flesh and blood. How can we not be thankful for the fellowship we have in our God. Things have been progressing well here. It is hard to believe that we are soon approaching the end of the first half of our first year. Doesn’t seem so long ago Jewel and I were being introduced to each other at Crown College. Certainly we have been brought faithfully along, and we have so very much to be grateful for. We spend the majority of our time teaching, but we find time to rest, and to continue to learn when we can!


    However, this is not just an update, nay for upon this day Americans reflect on the things that they are most thankful for. So, we had a time of fellowship together at the school. There was plenty of food, and we had a lot of fun.
     Before the details of the meeting are given I want to express that I am so thankful for my  wife. She does so much teaching every day, and still finds it within her to make wonderful meals, clean, and do extra teaching on the side. While I do try to be a help to her, I know that she does so much more than I could ask for. Also, when I married Jewel I knew she was a good cook, but I did not realize how GREAT of a cook she really is. It seems she can take anything and make it amazing. I have recently been renewing my effort to not put on weight, and, though I am trying to exercise every day, Jewel’s baking is irresistible. I’m hoping to learn to balance the two. :)


    On to the main event! Our Thanksgiving celebration began this morning at about 5:45 A.M.. While this may not be too exciting, the beginning of our celebration was to do nothing. It was the absence of alarm that began our thanksgiving off so wonderfully. It continued to be wonderful until about 8:00 when I got out of bed. Normally we begin our days off with coffee, we switch off and on who has to get out of bed to make the coffee (see we use our little french press so it’s a little more time than just pushing a button). But this morning was a special morning, and so we did not begin it with coffee, but with … wait for it … EGGNOG! Now, this is a drink that I am rather positive should be sold all year round at every market every where. However, because the people who actually own the markets don’t agree I must wait until that specific time of the year to get the Eggnog from Food Lion. The problem now of course is that Eggnog is not an Asian drink… So I found a recipe, and gave it a shot. The first time was probably a 7/10 which I will consider a small victory! After this, we got ready for the celebration. This consisted of me singing songs around the house while Jewel made the food. (I did get to baste the chicken in the oven though because… well… I’m all about that baste…)


    At the school we had a lot of fun fellowshipping with each other. Ian was grilling some pork, a young man named Gordon was preparing some yak, others were preparing different dishes in the kitchen, and the rest were standing around talking with the ones who were working. When it came time for the meal, it could not have been better. There was a lot of delicious meat, and, while there was no turkey, there were other items that made it quite the Thanksgiving feast including, but not limited to: mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, and rolls. It was delicious. Things tasted western, which is always a treat!



    After our meal, the guys shot some basketballs around for a while. Eventually we decided to set up and play kickball. Now the rules of kickball are quite simple right? You basically just take the rules of baseball and add a couple of things. The issue is that baseball is the great AMERICAN pastime. Seeing that the majority of those in attendance were not American, it made explaining the game just a bit harder. But eventually we had a good, and not TOO competitive game of kickball. We ended our time of fellowship with a couple of games of Farkle. Most everyone had left by now so we were down to six, but I would say that is a very good number of people for this game, so it was quite perfect. My wife won both of these because well, she IS a Pearson now…


    But really, we are so thankful, and we hope you are too. Don’t forget to be truly grateful for what you have because it is much more than we deserve. Also, drink plenty of eggnog for me this season.

Our Journey to the Jungle

     So Chris and I had the awesome opportunity to travel to a place this past Holiday that I’ve read about in books. The night before we left we were informed that our Holiday plans had changed and we were headed to the jungles of China near Thailand. As we were on our journey with Chris’ students’ family, the Paeng’s, they informed us more about this place we were about to enter. They spoke of the Lisu tribe. As I thought for a second, I remembered reading about this in one of Ms. Deeringer’s classes at Crown. Isobel Kuhn, one of my favorite people I have read about, went to this place and, well, you can read more about her on Google search. :)

     Though it took twelve hours to drive there and sixteen hours back, it was an adventure of a lifetime! Through many twists and turns we arrived in the jungle where life could not be lived in a more simple state. There was a certain peacefulness there. We looked at the mountains (much different than our Lijiang mountains) and the beautiful scenery and took it all in. When we arrived, we met the family we were to stay with for the few days. The village is like one big family. Everyone looks out for one another and the love that was shown here will not soon be forgotten. The family we stayed with has many fields of different crops and it was quite amazing to see it all! It was time to harvest the corn so all the village came together to help harvest, separate, and transport. The next day, the village would do the same for another family’s crops. It’s really a beautiful thing to see them happily work together.

     Some interesting things that happened while we were there include: seeing lizards all over, eating bee larva,  dressing up in Lisu dress, teaching the kids English songs, climbing a treacherous, incredibly high, I mean HIGH, mountain (I think I was the only one that thought this), and teaching them how to play Skip-Bo. :) Everything you ate, you just went out and cut it down or killed and ate it! They killed a pig for us and every night one of their chickens. Chris and the men went out fishing to catch fish to eat for dinner. In the mornings, we just went to a tree and picked some passionfruit to eat. While we were in the mountain, our friend hunted and killed two birds with two shots. Even while he was getting the bee hive out and was being swarmed by bees he cared not about getting stung or wearing any protective bee keeping attire!

     The Lisu people really showed us love not just in a direct manner but also in the way they lived their lives, especially one to another. Words and pictures cannot express how touched we were to see this. We learned some Lisu language too while we were there. All I remember is Aku Shamu which means thank you! Another cool thing was that the Paeng’s are Korean, so the parents would speak Korean to Chris’ student, he would translate to Mandarin to our Lisu friend, who also spoke Mandarin, who translated to Lisu to his family, and then the student would translate to English for us. It was a memorable trip and the Paeng’s were wonderful to be with. They are a family that really just enjoy being with one another. Well until our next adventure…!

 

Just Scooting Along

Thank-you for your prayers for Julia. She is doing much better, and on her way to a full recovery. 

It has been a little while since we have updated. I had wanted to write a blog about our scooter for a while, but I have let trying to learn the language so that we can you know buy groceries get in the way. But really, we are very much enjoying the adventure that has been Lijiang, Yunnan, China! I have such an amazing wife that God has given to me!

Our first experience with a scooter was that Brother Dom let us borrow his to ride around in his complex so we could get some practice. If you could see the driving here you would understand the deep fear and trepidation that flooded my heart when I contemplated taking my lovely new bride out on that abyss of certain death they call a road! Well actually they call it a 路, but I used a translating app to figure that out. I got on and opened the throttle. Centrifugal force took it’s natural course, and I was able to drive around without too much trouble. In fact, I was pretty good at this scooter thing. With my new assurance Jewel hopped on the back and we started to take off. I say started because we really didn’t go very far. The distance from the road to the light pole on the side of the road was quite limited. Good news was we, and the light pole came away without too much damage! 

For the next few days we would go out and drive the scooter trying to get used to it. When we got our own place, Brother Dom told us that we could borrow the scooter until we could get our own. So, I took my first drive out on the real road. It was pretty invigorating, and further proof that I was born to some day drive a motorcycle. (Of course, my wife and mother would debate this point heartily so I may have to settle for a Vespa eventually) I arrived at our apartment safely, and felt pretty comfortable driving it. 

So after a few days of being light-pole free, we were excited about getting our very own scooter. We went out with Ian and looked, and found our beautiful Lorem Somnium (or LS for short) It was a gorgeous shade of midnight blue, and we just knew that it was the one. So the next day I went back with Ian and picked it up. Now, Lijiang is not HUGE, but it is big enough that it has different areas with more and less traffic. Where we live, for instance, is about 10-15 walking (moderately) distance from the school. It is the south of Lijiang, and it is not busy. Where we bought the scooter was somewhat closer to the heart of Lijiang. The fact of the matter is that this was more traffic than I had ever driven in. Good news, things can’t get any worse *cue rain*… Now, I speak about these things as if they are bad, but I do hope you can catch that I really just find this kind of thing funny, and driving in the rain was actually kind of neat!

I forgot… Before we could buy a scooter we needed what might be considered a learners permit. Translation: Jewel, Aunt Missy, and I sat through about 3 hours of someone explaining the rules, regulations, and dangers of driving a scooter in a class entitled. “Lesson in Blood” (at least I think that was the title) Sound long and arduous? Well don’t forget that this 3 hours was nothing but Chinese (and a few american songs that played during commercials that had German subtitles) so, after swearing into whatever it was that we swore into when a man came into the room yelling. I think it was the part where the guy comes in and says, “Many of you are only here because you continue not to follow the rules, and you are terrible drivers… etc. etc.” His shouting sounded all the same to me, but suddenly everyone around us shot up and to attention. We followed suite and quite literally laughed our way through trying to repeat after what this man was saying. We did end up receiving our little scooter diplomas though, so that was nice. 

So after buying the scooter, it was straight to the DMV for registration. Ok, I know it’s not the DMV, but I am totally ignorant of what I might even try to call it, so we’ll pretend together. The first step is going into the building to show our paperwork, then it was out to the scooter man to get some paperwork filled out and the bike weighed, then it was back into the building to get the weight recorded, and some more paperwork, then it was back outside to get a picture taken of the scooter, then finally back inside for the license. (that sentince meigh bee rong grammatically) Point is, it was a lot of steps and a lot of time, but finally I was licensed and the scooter was ours for much less expensive (I guess) than it normally is. Freya, whom without it would have been next to impossible to get through this process, kept saying that she hated us because we only had to pay like 100 Yuan. (Oh, and we also got a free pressure cooker with purchase of our scooter :)   ) 

Now, we use that lovely thing every day to get back and forth to school, to the grocery store, and out on dates. It is a wonderful device and I am starting to get the hang of driving in China. I guess as long as I don’t get too comfortable we will probably be ok. 

Julia

       But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. - Philippians 4:19 

          At the last week’s end, Julia, the K-4, K5 teacher at Lijiang International academy, one of my sister Amanda’s best friends, and also a friend of Jewel and me, was not sounding very good as we were beginning our friday of classes. During the weekend she did not feel well. We found out on Monday, when she was able to see the American doctor in town, that she had both Pneumonia and Pericarditis. 

        Yesterday morning she and her aunt Missy flew out to a hospital in Thailand. Here she can receive the medical attention that she needs. However, she is going to have to pay out of pocket for the medical bill when the procedures are finished. The administrators of the school here in Lijiang have set up a secure site on which you can donate. Please, be generous and consider if you were in such a situation. 

           We hope for we have One who is worthy to hope in.  

Psalm 23

1 ¶ <<A Psalm of David.>> The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

 3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

PLEASE DONATE!: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/julia-s-prayer/234083

Trip to China: The First Days of School

     The bells are ringing (including alarms) and the kiddos come racing through the gate. It's school time again. Chris and I have officially completed two days of school! We cannot be more excited for who God has brought for us to teach this year. One of my student's Luke, our wiggle worm, had a birthday and our class enjoyed a big Chinese cake. All in all they have been a wonderful two days getting this teaching career on the go! I absolutely love it.

Trip To China: The Full Account- Part 3

        Well it isn’t quite 221B Baker Street, in fact it is better. It is home. To be honest, we still don’t have our address memorized and I would need someone to translate the lease agreement if I was going to tell you where it is. The truth about our apartment, however, is that it is quite an amazing first place of our own. It has not come into our hands without some bugs (surprisingly not literal bugs, but figurative ones… though I think I have seen a fly or two, and maybe a few arachnids). When we went house hunting, we went to a few agencies looking at apartments. Some were ok, and others were not so ok. But that first day we heard about an apartment that we would have to come back the next day to see. It was a first floor apartment with four bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and sunroom. It also had a small square fenced in area with room around it to plant a small garden. This my dear friends, this is what we now call home. 

It was an unfurnished apartment. Aside from the couple of bed frames which had questionably smelling material on the headboards, there was not a piece of furniture to be found. Brother Dom, and those here were very kind, however, and donated enough furniture for us not just to get started but to be comfortable living in our new apartment. As I wrote in the last blog, getting the furniture here was not without difficulty. We hired a moving truck, which is not to be compared with renting a U-haul. No, instead two small men showed up with an intent to bang, dent, and scrape every piece of furniture we desired to move. This, of course, is an over exaggeration. But it was bad enough that I had to ride in the back of the moving truck for one of the trips to protect the precious refrigerator doors, and the round glass table top. The distance from the school to our apartment may be a little over a mile, but really a great distance for us to enjoy our scooter!

The Workers realize the fridge won't fit out the gate.

Once we had signed the lease for the house, we realized a couple of things. One was that there was not a spicket in the wash room to hook up a washing machine (which was generously donated). Instead there was a spot in the wall that may or may not have contained a water pipe that may or may not have been connected to water. Well sometimes you just overlook that kind of… (cue power going out in the entire apartment) Hmm… We all looked around at each other with a puzzled sort of expression. Had we turned on too many lights? Was this apartment built to have only two lights on at a time? Was there a little gremlin in our breaker box that would continue to flip the switch off? Turns out there was just a short in one of the switches and when it was turned on it kept us safe by shutting the power off. (Which I think we are all grateful for.) These problems were fixed pretty quickly by the land lord’s friend, and a worker he brought with him. 

The next adventure we had was with the internet. When we went to China Telecom, we got one phone and one internet plan. This was great except there was no one at our house setting up the internet. Freya, the secretary for the school, is a native mandarin speaker from northeast China. She has been so helpful in translating things for us, and speaking to people about what is going on. This may be the hardest part of being in China is not being able to contact anyone. The first time the worker came, he spent a lot of time in the box on the wall, then outside, then back inside, then gone for a few minutes. Eventually he let us know that he would have to come back another day because he didn’t have what he needed for the job (p.s. this is pretty typical for workers like this here, though not a blanket sweep trait). 

When he did return, he had the wire that he needed and was raring to go! I soon found he was too raring, and not enough thinking. I had been letting him do his thing when I realized that he was throwing the wire through our window down from the second story stair case. This was not going to work. I showed him how this affected the ability of our window to close. He replied, “Oh…” he then got out a screw driver to see if he could work his way around our window frame. Now, there is not centralized heating so if he could have done this it would not have been the end of the world. The problem that I was having was that the room that the window was in was not the room that the internet was going to be in. I asked him in handmotionenglish how he was going to get the wire to the modem. He replied with a smile, shrug, and head wag in an “I don’t know, and I don’t know how to say I don’t know in english.” type way. So I walked him into the living room, opened the box, and showed him a pvc pipe that led up into the wall. He said, “No… no…” So I said, “I come up with you.” Now, I can’t tell you why I change the grammar in my sentences when I try to speak english to non-english speakers. Perhaps it just comes naturally? But I did find myself speaking in broken english with my new internet friend as we got to the second floor. The box up there had many wires, and many pvc pipes. I told him, “One of these goes to apartment.” He put his hands on his head and did that inhaling hiss that means, “Yes, but I don’t want to pick the wrong one and end up messing up someone else’s wires.” So I replied, “I go down and wiggle wire.” (Hand motions for wiggling wire.) “Oh, ya ya ya.” was the reply I received. So after wiggling the wire, I then went back up and helped him to push the wire down by unfolding it as we pushed it down. Eventually the internet was hooked up and the worker had given me his number for if I had anymore problems that he could help me with. He really was a nice guy, and I may ask for his help in the future even just to get to know him more. 

When we got the router for wi-fi, everything was in Mandarin. I tried to set it up, but could not figure it out. It so happens, however, that a man here that that is near to my age was one whom I slept across the hall from in the dorms at college. We didn’t really have any other connection, and he is a native to China. He and his wife have been a huge help to Jewel and I. He came over and set up my wi-fi in a jiffy, and gave us a program that we can use to learn mandarin. They also bought an oven for us, which we just recently have opened and started to use. (Ovens are not as common here as most things are made in a wok or other pans.)

In conclusion, our apartment is a HUGE blessing. It is only about 400 US dollars a month for our beautiful new home. Here are some random pictures, and Jewel will also soon be posting apartment pictures on her facebook (she’s been waiting a while for me to write a blog about the apartment so she can. Shalom!

Trip To China - The Full Account: The Adventure Continues

You try to take it all in but it’s like trying to drink in the ocean. (Not because it’s salty, but because of the amount of things to ingest.) The clouds rising halfway up the mountains that surround our city shine yellow as the sun sets on a busy day. The trees that live in abundance and line every street sway in the breeze as a small shower of rain wets their deep green leaves. A small kitten purrs as it cuddles up in my lap to rest after it’s weary day of toil. We’re in China, and we’re loving it. 

When we arrived in China, we were met by brother Ian, and brother Dom. We dropped our stuff off at the school, and took some of our possessions to the Crump’s apartment where we would stay the next couple of days. Thinking back now it’s a bit blurry, but, because Jewel and I thought to write things down as they happened, I can recall them. JET LAG, not the most fun thing. It was not until today (the day that I am writing this… which may not be the day I post this… so you’ll have to try to guess the day…) that I really felt like I was able to understand where we were driving in the vehicle. The rest was like that feeling when someone wakes you up from a short nap, and you hardly have the mental capacity to respond. Anyway, Ian and Candace have a very nice apartment, and we greatly enjoyed being able to stay there. Their little dog Jackie met us upon our arrival, and made us feel very much a part of the family. Candace was still in the states, and it was nice of Ian to host us there! THERE WAS COFFEE! For some of you this might not would have been such a big deal, but if you know Jewel and I you can be sure we greatly appreciated this necessity of human life. The only thing that gave us any trouble was the squatty, but we don’t need to dwell on that.

When Candace did return, we were allowed to stay with Brother Dom. His wife had to make a trip back to the states because of her father’s health. We are still hoping that things will turn for the better for their family. Brother Dom is a great man, and we have enjoyed getting to meet him, and are looking forward to a continuing relationship! It was not many weeks previous that they had some trouble with flooding. One of the drains on a balcony got backed up during a large storm, and water got into the second story of their beautiful villa home. They have been fighting getting the water out of the wood and walls since. They also have a two person scooter. This may be the death of Jewel and I, not because we almost hit a light pole our first time on the scooter together, but because the way people drive here in China, we will be their last consideration until we are made a permanent part of the pavement. Just kidding… mostly (duhn duhn duhhhhhhhhhhh)

Since we have arrived, we have experienced many different kinds of food. The local people are the Naxi (or Nashi), and I would describe their food as being so-so. I do like rice, and some of the meat and vegetables were good, but not the best we have had. At a little guest house by Tiger Leaping Gorge* (*see next paragraph for more details) we ate some Tibetan style food. The “garlic bread” was rather delicious and the rest of the food was quite great. I’m sorry that I am not being very descriptive, but you have to remember that we are trying to recall what happened in a dream state of mind, and it gets rather mixed up after a while. There IS a restaurant called the MAYA that we have eaten at twice now. It is run by an Indian couple whose daughter I will be teaching this next year. The food there is very good. They have great curry, mango juice, mango smoothies, the “best burger in town (and possibly China)” and a cool little salad with sliced carrot, diced peppers, uncooked ramen noodles, sesame oil, and love. (It tastes a lot like the asian salad that my wife makes… though I know only like Matt and Amanda have had that.) There is also one other restaurant owned and operated by an American who also runs an English teaching school. Their food (Pizza, Fried Rice, Fries, awesome coffee to name a few) is very delicious, and they also are the home to Snoop Lion, my new little kitten friend. We have been twice to his restaurant as well and both times the little guy has found his way to my lap to play together. The majority of the time we have had a lot of different Chinese foods, and have not disliked too much of it. Perhaps the bitter vegetable, and the chicken feet were the only things we were not so fond of. The bitter vegetable (actual name) is just that, and the chicken feet (at least the way it was prepared this time) looked too much like eating the last two fingers of a human hand for me to enjoy. 

*Tiger Leaping Gorge is a beautiful, and awesome place. Ian took us here in our first couple of days. The drive out there was absolutely beautiful. You drive along the Yangtze (Yellow) river for a while past villages, and Chinese homes. The actual driving however is not so hot. Dotted lines are on basically every road. Also, the Chinese sometimes have serious depth perception problems when it comes to oncoming traffic. Just about every minute you are cringing as a small car zips back into it’s lane within inches of a head on collision with a cement truck. At the actual gorge is a beautiful section where the water flows and tumbles with great power. It is rumored that a hunter was chasing a tiger, and the tiger (out of fear, and with the help of it’s magical powers) jumped the gorge. The hunter gave up the hunt out of respect for this magical tiger. Ian and I have surmised that a bad hunter told this story to his wife one day after another unsuccessful day out. The guest house was beautiful to say the least, and Jewel and I hope to stay there for a couple of days some time. It is rainy season here, but the weather has been absolutely gorgeous most of the time. 

Canvas above me, glass table top in one hand, refrigerator door in another. I was bouncing on my knees down the school’s road in the back of a Chinese moving truck. These guys are no joke! They get your stuff from A to B, but would just about roll your stuff there if it was the easiest was to do it. So I ((was)) volunteered to ride in the back of the truck and hold onto the things. See, we were on our way to Jewel and my new apartment, but all that information will have to wait for the next blog!

Trip To China - The Full Account: An Epic Adventure

Today was the day. The sky was a light shade of gray as the rain suggested that it may bring a sobering atmosphere to an already intense circumstance. We pulled up to the airport and started pulling our suitcases from red lightning. (This is the name of what has been my vehicle for the last six years of my life. The red Jeep Cherokee Classic has been through a lot, and held many friends and acquaintances. It will be missed.) One, two, three, four, five, six …. Two carry-ons, and two laptop bags. It worked out well that the majority of my family was able to make it out for the send off or we may still be sitting in the parking lot juggling those bags. We wheeled them all in, got our temporary boarding passes, and came to the front counter. After the first three bags were put on the scale, the assistant went ahead and let a reality check fly. “You know, this is going to be nine hundred and sixty-five dollars for these alone.” Doh! When Jewel and I had checked online I had mistaken the overweight size for the standard size, and so had packed them mostly between 50-71 pounds (save for one that weighed close to 100!) 

So we reach the first moment of decision. Do we pay probably close to three thousand dollars to get our bags sent from Norfolk? We decided not to. My father and I made an organized bee-line for the vehicle and drove to the closest K-mart to acquire two more suitcases. In the mean time, Jewel and the others were busy unpacking all of the suitcases, evening them out to be fifty pounds or below, and leaving the remainder in a pile to be packed into the new suitcases. Were we not sure that the Lord had called us to go, this alone would have been a difficult obstacle to overcome. But truly, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in thee.” We packed the rest of our bags and got back in line. When we got to the front register again, our initial helper had moved on and a new man was to help us to get on the plane. We weighed the bags and received our new price that was a considerable amount less than the amount for just the first three weighed bags. Then we received some more news. “Now, you realize that because you have a lay-over of seventeen hours, you are going to have to pick up your bags in the JFK airport?” Doh Again! 

You may be wondering why we brought so much baggage. The answer to that question is somewhat simple while also a bit complex, depending on how you look at it. So we will try to look at it from the simple kind-of-way. I received counsel that if we moved somewhere, like to China, I was to make sure that my wife was going to be able to live comfortably. So we both went through our stuff, and filtered it until we felt that to get rid of anything else would be to lose the ability to feel at home in our new country. The only things we left behind that would not fit into the suitcases after we had repacked them were some books that will have to wait to be read. 

The plane was not uncomfortable. Jewel and I were on a side with only two seats and so we were able to sit next to each other and talk about what we might do when we got to JFK. We had already said that because it would be difficult to get all of our luggage organized and moving with just the two of us that we may not stay at the hotel we had booked, but instead just stay in the airport for the full seventeen hours until we could check our baggage into the new airplane. Upon our arrival in New-York, however, we found that with two rented carts we could get our luggage out the door to where yellow-taxi could call us a van to fit it all in.

Now, you must take a second to picture this with me. Jewel and I are now pushing a cart each piled up with four medium/large suitcases while wheeling our carry-ons, carrying our backpacks, and lugging my guitar along with me. The looks we got, and comments given were often quite humorous. The scenery would change when we got to Guangzhou the next day, but only because we would be going through an airport at double time. (This story is for later though)

So, our illustrious taxi driver finally arrived at the Garden Inn Suites in Jamaica, New-York. This was somewhat of a difficult task because he had trouble saying the word “Baisley”, the street name that the hotel was on. We unloaded our stuff onto a luggage cart (these I have gained a great deal of respect and appreciation for.) and went inside to check in. This process was smooth enough, and we left for our room after explaining the reason for the plethora, nay even the abyss of luggage to our kind guest service assistant.  Once we had settled into our room, contacted folks to let them know that we were safely in our hotel, ordered some Domino’s sandwiches for dinner, and re-arranged our bags in our less than extremely large room, I decided that it was time for my nose to be powdered. But I soon realized that this would have to wait as I stepped into the bathroom to hear a “splish-splash” of feet. It took me less time than it is taking me to type this sentence to realize that the splish-splash was being created by my own feet in the pool of water that I was standing in. So, after laying a towel across the entrance to the bathroom, and, out of possible muscle memory, leaning down to check on the sink and toilet to find where this leak may be coming from, (it was a broken seal on the toilet) I told my beautiful wife that I would return soon after talking with the front desk about our dilemma. 

I was met in the lobby by a tall man with a kind attitude who asked if there was anything wrong. When I told him what was happening up in room 407, he told me that he would be up directly to help and that we would have to be moved. His gesture when he said moved made me nervous because he seemed to be saying that we would be bringing our luggage down to the lobby. I told him that we had a lot of luggage, and he assured me that we would not have to move too far. So, Jewel and I began moving our suitcases out to the hallway. Soon a man came walking in with a plunger. I began to help him to realize that the toilet did not need plunging, and showed him where the leak was just before the original man from the lobby came in with a new key. So a few members of Garden inn began to help us to move our stuff down the hallway to a new room which was at least twice the size of our old one. The man explained that he wanted to help us to have room for our luggage. We thanked him, and called Domino’s to tell them of our room change. 

The next morning found us early standing outside of the hotel waiting for a shuttle to bring us to the airport. The first shuttle had already left without us because it was too full (and again, our luggage was of the ridiculous sort of amount) We struck up a conversation with a couple of guys about where we were going, and what we were doing. When we mentioned what Jewel’s major in college was, one of the two guys spoke up, “Oh, so you’ll be going to a very rural area right? Don’t you have to go really deep to be one of those?” We explained this to him, and laughed about not having a specific set of guidelines that after acquired would get you mission status on Facebook. 

We arrived back at JFK at 7:30 am and rolled our baggage up to the counter as we were the first two in line for our specific flight. Our flight did not leave till 11:15, but we wanted to be sure that we had enough time to get comfortably on the plane. About two hours later, we were very glad we had come early since we were still waiting at the counter. See, this was China Southern Airlines first flight out of JFK, and their card reading machine was simply not working. There was going to be an additional fee for our extra baggage, and after giving some cash that I had, the rest was not going to be easy. After about a half-hour of waiting, we were told that they would try one more thing and if it did not work we would have the rest of our fee waved. About an hour and a half later, I reminded them that they had told me this, and we were finally allowed to go through to wait at our gate. 

That was seven-hundred dollars saved because the card machine did not work. We got to the gate in time to sit down and order a cup of coffee. Soon, over the pager I heard my name being called up to the gate desk. A couple of thoughts went through my mind. Maybe I had packed something in one of the suitcases that was not supposed to be in there, maybe we were going to receive another apology about our delay earlier. But, on the contrary, the desk agent wished to inform me that I owed seven hundred dollars to the airline, and that the card reader had been fixed. To this I replied, that I had received a receipt that said that I would not have to pay for the rest of the baggage because I had been waiting so long. She replied, “Yes, I do remember seeing you at the front…” She called the manager and told me that he would be coming soon. Upon his arrival, I learned that he was not going to be kind about the whole incident (though he had been with us since we arrived, and knew how long we had been waiting.) He informed me that it was their first day and because the machine was working now I needed to pay for the baggage. We went back and forth for a while as the gate opened up for boarding. This being a flight to china, the line got REALLY long REALLY fast. I talked him into giving us a discount on our baggage and still ended up saving three hundred. The flight was mostly eventless though it did last for fifteen hours. Little did we know, this would be the calm before the storm. 

Guangzhou sits near Hong-Kong and is a semi-popular airport. Not quite as big as Beijing, but still rather large as we soon learned. We were told in New York that we would not have to go through customs. This proved to not be true as we arrived. This, however was the most painless part of the Guangzhou airport. We had to fill out arrival cards, and had our visas stamped within ten minutes. Then we went to pick up our luggage. Because we were the first to get our luggage on the airplane, we were also the last to get our luggage off. The good news was that we did not have to pay for the two carts that we would use to cart our luggage around. So with the same setup as we had in the New York airport we set off to find where we were supposed to go to get to our airplane. The problem? No one spoke English… So we were trying to find out how to get our bags to wherever we were to get them, and this was not without great difficulty. Our plane had arrived close to 4:00, and our airplane was to leave at 5:40. So off we go through the airport. This was the highest moment of stress during our voyage. We knew no one, did not speak the right language, and were being given different instructions from each person we talked with. As we got to the third level through the elevator, I realized that I did not know what we were going to do. I did not know where to go, nor what to do if we did get there. But around the bend came a Chinese man who said, “Do you need help? They said someone needed help.”

The next hour and a half was full of running, and sweating. Chasing a man who was trying to help. Getting ahead of long lines to find that we were in the wrong line. Finally getting our bags on a belt to find we had to go to another airplane line to pay for our extra baggage. Dry-heaving seemed to come on as a result of the loss of time. Finally, with boarding pass in hand, and passport in the other. We ran to the TSA as we checked our watches and found the time to be 5:25. It did not take too long to get through TSA and we started running, backpack bouncing, guitar swaying, and carry-ons rolling through the Guangzhou airport. Our gate was 226, and so we were flying past the gates at lightning speed. It was a long corridor. I mean, a LONG corridor. 216, 218, 220, 222, 224, FINALLY! I look up at the gate sign to read, “Flight to Lijiang moved to gate 218” … RETREAT! Off go the crazy two americans back the way they came from and running now at warp speed. 218 was down an escalator. As we approached the gate, we saw the sign flashing in red “FINAL CALL LIJIANG” What a relief! We got on the bus that would shuttle us to the airplane and traded face sweat as we kissed each other. 

An hour and a half later we were still sitting on the runway. Not sitting next to each other, but sharing the unity of a nap after our exhausting run. I did feel bad for the two guys sitting next to me because who knows how I smelled! But we were on our way to Lijiang, and we knew that our mission was accomplished. We went through no security or customs at the Lijiang airport, and soon were walking towards brother Dom and brother Ian. What a relief! We had been brought faithfully to China, and this was just the beginning of our adventures.