February 22, 2012. It is just over one week until I leave for China. The past couple of weeks have been filled with school applications, passport and visa applications, immunizations, coordination of packing and storing our belongings, arranging our property manager and getting our house ready to rent among other things. This is on top of just living life so the adventure has officially begun.
It was quite the process to get immunizations for everyone. We called they Utah County Health Department to find out the process and when I told them that we had 8 people they said that they needed to block some time for us. They blocked 2.5 hours. About 2 hours and 20+ immunizations later we were finished. The Health Department did an amazing job with our family. Just a couple more booster shots and then family will be ready to go.
It's amazing how much stuff you collect over the years. We have been in this house for seven years and it has been good to purge a little bit. We have made many trips to DI, filled many garbage bags, given stuff away to friends and family and KSL classifieds have been very productive for us. As my brother Brian famously said, "One man's trash is another man's garbage". I think one of the blessings of living in China will be a simpler life with less "stuff". I could be wrong though. It seems I always find the deal in the markets there and end up with a bunch more "stuff".
When we move to China, I am sure that having 8 blonde hair, blue eyed people will cause a lot of reaction. We have already experienced this to some degree here in the US. The kids all have small carry-on type suitcases but needed a large suitcase. So when we went to buy luggage it was quite the attraction to have 6 huge suitcases at the register. There were many questions and comments about why we had so many suitcases. That will be just a small taste of what we get when we land in China for the first time as a family.
The whole process of preparing to move has been a ton of work. There is still a lot of work to do, but we have been very blessed as a family. We are really looking forward to the many adventures that we will have as a family in China.
Boyd
