Beverly is in England for 2 weeks!

I was happy to receive an email from Beverly letting me know she had arrived in Oxford, England for a two-week program there. She flew with a group, and they had a long travel day from China to Thailand to Sri Lanka to London, and onto Oxford. After some confusion on her host family location and exactly where that home was located ... she is settled in with a family who has a 4 year old daughter (probably good practice for her in being around Abby when she comes here!) and things are going much better. She'll be back in China around August 9 or 10.

We did get travel information on her arrival in the U.S., and she will leave China on August 21, connecting through Tokyo and Minneapolis before moving onto Peoria. Another long travel day ... but we will be there to greet her and get her settled in Tremont for the coming school year!

We need a badminton coach!

Beverly plays badminton in China and wondered if we play here ... and I told her that it is more of a casual lawn game than a serious game, at least in this area. So I told her she was going to have to teach TJ and Abby how to play it right!

Here are TJ and our neighbor on the driveway attempting to play tonight (note without a net OR shoes) ... as you can see, it may take many, many lessons! :-)



Abby was chasing lightning bugs at the end of the video, but didn't do much catching. Beverly, I'm not sure if you have them in China or call them by the same name. Sometimes they are also called fireflies and they have a yellow "light" that glows at night.

A special message from TJ & Abby

TJ and Abby had a great time recording this video message for Beverly. They have been wanting to tell her some things, so I thought this would be a good way. They didn't even practice what to say, just sat down and said what was on their mind ...



Now they are running around saying "Next time we do a video for Beverly we will tell her this or that" so I think stay tuned for more videos from TJ & Abby studios!

Playing outside on a beautiful evening

TJ and Abby love to be outside in the evenings when we are home. We took a few pictures to show you around the outside of the house:





Mitch likes to ride his motorcycle, and it is probably not like any motorbike you have ever seen in China! And it's pretty LOUD! :-)



TJ and Abby decided to show you how they like to ride their scooters, and they wanted me to take a video for you. They are not usually this QUIET so don't be fooled by them here! ha ha But they did get a chance to show off just a tiny bit!



In the middle part of the scooter action, I did kind of pan the whole area, and you can see most of our street and the houses around ours.

Tremont High School

I took a few pictures to share with Beverly on Saturday ... unfortunately there was a thunderstorm in the area, so it's more gray and cloudy looking than sunny and pretty!

Our high school is just finishing up an expansion, and this is a shot from the side of the building. Too bad the power lines and pole are in my way! (click on any of these picture for a larger view)



Here is a close up shot of just the new main entrance of the school, which is a portion of the new expanded space.



And since school buses are something that are not familiar in Guangzhou, we took a shot of the Tremont buses to give her an idea of what she will be riding to and from school each day! TJ and Abby will ride the bus along with Beverly, with the middle school/high school being the first stop, and Abby staying on to finish the short ride to the grade school. Our subdivision just about fills up all the seats on the bus (about 60) with a few stops at rural homes between us and the school.



Hopefully this will be helpfor for an early idea of what things look like here! The kids were talking about how different things will be for you ... and I completely understand how that is going to feel since we felt the very same differences during our trip to China! :-)

Help us Welcome Beverly to Tremont!

We are so excited to have the opportunity to host an exchange student this year! Beverly is 15 years old and will be enrolled as a Sophomore at Tremont High School!

She will arrive in Tremont sometime around the middle of August, but travel information is not confirmed yet.

Beverly is from China ... Guangzhou, Guangdong to be exact. We visited Guangzhou during our trip to China and enjoyed our time there.

I'm posting a few pics of Beverly on the side bar of this blog, and I'll be adding new posts with information and pictures about Tremont so she can get to know more about us and share this blog with her family.

Take a minute to leave a comment here and help us welcome Beverly!