Final Preparations

The last couple months have been a bit of a whirlwind. After graduating in early June, I spent sometime with my family in Seattle and then headed home at the end of the month. It was quite the trip, I have never driven that much before in my life. I spent a little while in Montana, but the latter half of my trip included two 14 hour driving days. But my time at home was great. I was able to spend more time with my family and also I had some training for my upcoming time in China. A lot of it focused around adjusting to living in another culture and teaching English as a second language, among some other good things. After a week in Michigan I spent time in Idaho with friends and I am now in Seattle making final preperations for my trip. I leave August 14th for Shanghai. I will be travelling with a fellow teacher for the first two weeks. We are going to spend time in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Xi'an. I am very excited for this and I think it will be a good warm up to actually living in a new and very different culture. It is exciting to think that I leave in two weeks, but a lot of my feelings seem to deal with me not really knowing what to expect. I guess I am just looking forward to getting on the plane and going because until then I don't think I will feel much different than I do now. I still have some things to complete before I go, but everything is coming together pretty well...hopefully before the 14th I will have everything ready to go as needed.