The Beginning

In mid February, during one of my random calls to my friend Patrick, who was in Dalian with me for a few months of my last trip, I was presented with a rather "out of the blue" question. "Do you want to go to China?" We had always talked about going back to Dalian some day after we graduated college. Well, the time had come when we were both finishing up. I had just graduated and Patrick was on his last semester. He had found a blog from a girl who used to work for Future English in Dalian and thought this would be a good company to work for since we had both heard of it before and had friends who had worked for the company.

After a bit of research and some discussions with my family, we decided to apply to teach English in China. It took a while to get everything in order but we were finally given the go ahead and officially hired by Aston English (the corporate name for Future English)for summer and fall semesters. We had our hearts set on going to Dalian but all the schools in this town were filled for the summer semester. We were told that there were openings in Dalian for fall semester but would need to choose a place to go for summer. When we called the recruiter the next day, he suggested that we go to Xuzhou Aston for the summer since they really needed teachers. We didn't really care where we went for the summer as long as we would go to Dalian in the fall.

A few days later we received our contracts and contact emails for the schools we would be going to. We bought our airline tickets and a while later got our tourist visas as instructed. This is how it all started.

Background

It all started as a freshman in college at Southwest Missouri State University-West Plains. It was my first semester; Fall 2002. I was eagerly waiting for my class to end, for my teacher to quit her endless droning about whatever it was that she was talking about. I had only a few minutes left of listening to her talk when she suddenly stopped and changed the subject. She began talking about a study abroad program that the school was offering. I perked up and started paying attention at the phrase "study abroad". She went on to explain that our school had a branch campus in Dalian, China and anyone interested could get an application from her after class.

Being interested in travel ever since I could remember I went and talked to her after class and got my information packet. I learned that they only accepted 2 students every semester. Since there were plenty of people that were picking up info packets I thought I wouldn't be accepted. After an application, an essay, and an application fee I began waiting to find out if I would be chosen to travel to China for a semester.

Weeks passed. During this semester, my grandmother passed away. I told all my teachers that I would be missing some class since I had to travel to California for Grandma's funeral. They gave me my homework and wished me a safe trip. One night while at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Lori's house after the funeral I was checking my email. There it was. An email from the Dean explaining that he had heard I was out of town but didn't want to make me wait any longer for the status of my application. I had been accepted for the study abroad program in China! I raced through the house to find my family and tell them the news. I nearly slid into the kitchen counters because I was wearing socks and running on marble (or some other slick stone) floors.

A couple months later, early February 2003, I was boarding a plane with another student and some teachers from Springfield. The semester went well and I made many friends. The semester went so well, in fact, that I asked to stay another semester and was allowed to.

When I left China in January 2004, I wasn't very sad. Naturally, I was sad that I wouldn't be seeing many of my good friends for a long time but somehow I knew that I would be returning some day and that I would see these friends again.