So we have now received word that we are able to travel back to China. It will be a new adventure for sure but some things will be familiar to us. We leave this coming Saturday and will head to Vancouver first and then it is off to Beijing. This is a familiar route for us both so we take comfort in that. So what started out as a 3 week trip home turned into an 8 month pandemic stay in Ontario with ‘no fixed address’ as they say. Previous blogs have mentioned the people we stayed with and places we stayed in but the most familiar and the longest run was at our trailer. I think I added it up to be about 70 nights at the trailer overall and this is quite the feat even for us. We have never stayed this much at the trailer but we did have a hot July and a cooler, wet August which led to an even cooler, wet September. It was time to move out! As I searched the internet and Facebook for a place to stay I landed us a small studio apartment near the airport. My timing was impeccable for two reasons. One was that we figured with our paperwork submitted we could well be on our way by mid month and two, well unfortunately for us the trailer parks’s owners decided to close the park for good and was giving us until mid October to pack up and leave. Well! This was not the amount of time we had left in Ontario, we had two weeks at best. So back to the internet and Facebook to find a place to store the trailer for the winter as we wouldn’t be back in time to move it at the forecasted closing date of the park of June 15th. I didn’t even have time to send the owners a nasty email I had to get to work immediately because no one wants to leave their trailer on a site that no one is caring about. So again I got lucky. I found a storage place on Rae Road and they even were nice enough to take the canoe and the two kayaks. Wow, that was quick. Next up was my third trip back to the internet and Facebook. We wanted to sell the much-loved deck that we had built just two seasons ago. This was surprisingly easy and within a few days a buyer was ready to pick it up and take it to a new location. Through the communication with the buyer and even pictures at its new location I had a good feeling that new memories would be made on the deck and it was in a good spot. It’s funny how you get attached to certain objects. I had the deck built while John was away the first year in Beijing and helped in the planning of it. Oh well there will be another deck in another campground someday that will replace it. So here we are with no roots at all and hoping to grow them temporarily in Tianjin, China mid September 2020.
As ever it will be a little sad to leave Ontario but we saw lots of the boys and my mom on this trip. I think we are all ready to go back to a routine and live our separate lives for awhile. I feel sometimes that we couldn’t put our best foot forward all the time as there were so many unknowns and interruptions to our summer but we did it and are a stronger family unit for having lived through a pandemic together. We lived through the ups and downs of job insecurity and job applications with Matt and some shifting of home life and job applications with Nick. We all tried to vacation over the summer but there always seemed to be a cloud hanging over all of us this summer as there were uncertain times and now hopefully we can enjoy what is at the end of this current journey, a new city, new people and new experiences. Good luck to our homeland as the pandemic continues and good luck to us as we venture out again!
