Together Again in China

After 9 weeks apart, our family was reunited last Thursday here in China. The girls and I flew from Seattle to Wuhan to be with Adam in our new home city. Just 10 days before, Adam moved our family to a new apartment in Wuhan which is a city of 9 million people. Previously we've lived in Huangshi which is an hour drive outside of Wuhan. We've moved here so that Adam can attened Huazhong Keji Daxue to study for his doctorate degree in International Business. We found out in June, just before we girls departed for the USA, that Adam had won a full-ride scholarship for the program. We're very excited about this new chapter in our lives! Adam will also be taking Chinese classes along with his business classes. He will study for 3 years, so ironically enough, this new apartment is where we will live the longest that we've ever lived in one apartment. Ha! We did live in CA for 3 years, but we lived in two different apartments.

Now to back up, the girls and my flight back to China became a little more complicated just 3 days before we left. On Sunday evening, the 21st, Elise fell down two steps at my parents home. She was crying harder and acting stranger than I had ever seen before so we took her to the ER and discovered she had broken her left leg. Poor baby! The next day we returned to the orthopedic doctor where they put a full leg cast on her leg. As sad as it is, the cast is purple, and its tiny size looks pretty cute on Elise. Thankfully, the Lrd was very gracious to us and provided one empty seat right next to the two seats we had purchased on our flight. I was supposed to hold Elise in my lap since she had an infant ticket, but the flight attendant said that we could use the open seat. That was a huge blessing! I don't know how we could have done the flight without it! Also, Trevor and Inga Kingsley, two of our new teachers, flew on our same flights so I had lots of help from them with the girls and with our luggage.

For the first several days in Wuhan we didn't do much just because we three girls had bad jet-lag so we don't have much energy. Also, when we got home, Adam had already been really sick for several days and continued to be sick. After talking with a doctor he thinks he had an intestinal virus so it held on much longer than normal food poisoning. Thankfully, Adam has turned a corner and the girls are now sleeping until 4:30 a.m. instead of getting up at 1:30 a.m. like they did the first three days.

The past two days we've made several trips to different police stations around town doing paperwork to register our residency in this city. Thankfully, Adam's Chinese is good so he is able to communicate to get the job done. These are the kinds of things that our English teachers have done for them by their bosses, but now we're on our own for things like this and many other things. Like I said though, Adam's Chinese is very good now! The whole point of him staying in China this summer was for him to study Chinese - and study he did! I'm really proud of him! Another thing we've done is register Sophia at her new preschool. Last, Adam's spent several afternoons at his university registering for classes.

I have better intentions of writing more frequently on my blog :) so check back more often this fall!