The Journey to Utah for ESL Training

July 27 - We left Calgary and stopped in Lethbridge to visit the Glenns. We continued on and stopped in Raymond to visit Irene Jensen (we found Margaret Heggie, the "retired nurse" working there). In Dillon, Montana we encountered heavy rainfall. Visited Fairmont (Montana), which is on our Time Share List.

July 28 - We left the I-15 at McCammon, Idaho and travelled via Lava Hot Springs and many points along the way, including Bear Lake, Montpelier, Paris (saw the Tabernacle) and took a long twisty road to Logan, finally arriving at Hedmans about 10 PM.

Found our travel to China itinerary on the email the next morning. We fly out of Calgary August 26 at 7:10 pm heading to Los Angeles. Then it is on to Seoul Korea and finally arriving in Qingdao on August 28 at 2:55 pm (local time). This means it will take 29 hours and 45 minutes from the time we take off in Calgary to the time we touch down in Qingdao, China. The distance travelled will be 7543 miles! It will be quite the trip.

On Going Preparations

On July 8th, we attended the Chinese Consulate to pick up our passports and almost did not get them because of a Political Demonstration at the Consulate. We were able to get our passports stamped with a fancy looking visa endorsement.

The time is flying by and it seems harder to focus on what needs to be done. The Stampede has come and gone. We drove to Vancouver July 9 and came back on July 12. We were entertained very well and had excellent weather for eating fish, fish, fish, (so fresh and soooo good) - outside even. We loved the hiking we were able to do, beautiful scenery everywhere.

We want to add a picture of our family (even though we are missing Breanna - Born May 10/09). The picture was taken in Canmore last September when we were all together for a Run in Banff.

Here is a photo of Breanna. She is 2 months old in the picture.

We have each been given tentative assignments for teaching at this point. They have let us know that we will each be on a different campus teaching 3 oral english and 3 written english classes per week. Exciting. We expect to meet with the teachers we are replacing next week to get first hand information (the Salmons).

Visa Applications

Our next step was to obtain documentation from China (evidence of permission to come to China and work). These documents were received by Courier from Provo. We then completed our part of the visa application form and off we went to the Chinese Consulate in downtown Calgary. It looked much like the Canadian Passport office with many people waiting holding their number designating their turn. We sat by a Chinese lady who saw our paper work and asked what we were doing. She had been an English teacher in China for a number of years before coming to Calgary.

The closing time was about to expire but we were called just in time and submitted our paper work. The next step is to pick up our passports from the consulate, hopefully with our visa endorsed.

We had not seen the Calgary Stampede Parade for a number of years so decided to attend - a couple of parade photographs are attached.