We had a change in plans and won't be returning to California before going to Beijing so when we first tried to change our tickets, we were horrified at the change fees and additional costs involved: something like 97,000 additional miles, + $450 for our tickets, and another $900 for Annette's tickets. Fortunately, an angel by the name of Angela Rose from United's ticket office in Detroit finally got us squared away for just $300, but we just have to make some tight 1hr connections from Boston-->Denver-->SFO--Beijing.
Sometimes it's nice to have a wife who has "command" as one of her strengths, per Strengthfinders. She manged to lobby MIT to pay for our entire move to LA, which comes out to just over $17k! Thanks Annette, I'm going to make a donation to your clothing budget!
Joshua is starting up his tutoring sessions in Mandarin, transitioning to learning Simplifed Chinese characters using this book series. I am starting to step up my Chinese studying as well. The tools available for learning Chinese now are incredible: Pleco OCR, ChineseWriter
We've given up on buying a home in LA right now. The housing market is going through the roof.
Annette called one listing and just after a few days, they had already 15 offers, made 10 counter offers, and advised her to only make an offer 100-200k above asking price, and also, to come with cash. Right.
Annette is headed out to Beijing this week to look for an apartment and to see if she can get our boys signed up for school at the primary school.
55 days to go until Beijing.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Tickets bought
We were waffling on where we should depart from, and what date to depart for awhile, but once we made a decision, everything else came very quickly: tickets purchased, work end dates fixed, other summer plans decided, and here we go. August 21 2013 will be our launch date.
We have the rest of this summer to pack our stuff, decide what little we need to take to Beijing, what else to send to storage in California, find a place to stay in Beijing, get the China visas sorted, and the boys schools situation settled.
Annette has a done a lot of leg work around looking for schools for the boys. Hopefully there will be spots of our boys to attend the primary school attached to Peking University. It's a school for the children of university faculty, and it's not the typical Chinese school apparently. It's not all rote memory and grueling seatwork, but they do schedule breaks for eye exercises.
We are hoping this experience will not traumatize the boys to Chinese culture and language, but hopefully will open their (as well as our) eyes to the culture(s) of the 1.3 billion people in China.
We've done a lot of looking onine, it's amazing what you can actually see on Google Maps of another city, and doing Youtube searches. There is an apartment complex close to Peking University that a lot of students and visiting scholars live at: Huaqingjiayuan Apartments that we are eyeing. When Annette goes out there in July, we hope to find a place that works out.
When I saw this article in the NYTimes, I almost freaked out and decided against taking our kids there for a year, but after doing some more research, I was more reassured that going was not going to cause real permanent lung damage to the boys. We'll have to bring or get some good face masks and air purifiers.
We have the rest of this summer to pack our stuff, decide what little we need to take to Beijing, what else to send to storage in California, find a place to stay in Beijing, get the China visas sorted, and the boys schools situation settled.
Annette has a done a lot of leg work around looking for schools for the boys. Hopefully there will be spots of our boys to attend the primary school attached to Peking University. It's a school for the children of university faculty, and it's not the typical Chinese school apparently. It's not all rote memory and grueling seatwork, but they do schedule breaks for eye exercises.
We are hoping this experience will not traumatize the boys to Chinese culture and language, but hopefully will open their (as well as our) eyes to the culture(s) of the 1.3 billion people in China.
We've done a lot of looking onine, it's amazing what you can actually see on Google Maps of another city, and doing Youtube searches. There is an apartment complex close to Peking University that a lot of students and visiting scholars live at: Huaqingjiayuan Apartments that we are eyeing. When Annette goes out there in July, we hope to find a place that works out.
When I saw this article in the NYTimes, I almost freaked out and decided against taking our kids there for a year, but after doing some more research, I was more reassured that going was not going to cause real permanent lung damage to the boys. We'll have to bring or get some good face masks and air purifiers.
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