Simply write us at betterthanlife@juno.com
We'll make sure you get put on our list!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Where to catch us...
First of all, apologies for any of you who have kept up with this blog...
This was supposed to be a twice-a-month update on our family with pictures, etc.
Apparantly, trying to keep up with that in the midst of moving from place to place over the summer was more than we wanted to keep up with.
We've been visiting family all summer, spending the majority of the time with Jay's parents in Mountain Grove, MO. We also spent time with Jay's sister and brother, Nana, Grandmother, and are currently in Aurora, CO with Vikki's older sister.
As for an update on our plans to go to China...we were (surpisingly for us) almost not able to make it this year. We had initially signed contracts with Changzhou Institute of Technology, only to have the school cancel our contract when we informed them that we are expecting another child in January. (More on that later) I didn't realize how different the job search would be now that we're a family and not just two employable bodies...it does make sense that a university would prefer two teachers in one apartment over one with extra responsibility, but I still expected to find a job rather easily. With the search for another job relegated to a matter of months, that probably contributed to the difficulty we encountered. We were, in the end, able to land a position with a school in Hangzhou, very near to the first school. The school is a private university, Zhejiang University City College. We were very excited to get a position in Hangzhou as there are some other friends we know of who will be moving to the city at the same time that we do. We leave on the 18th of this month (in five days!).
We'd love to keep any of you posted on what we're up to, but we don't think we'll have access to this blog in China. Please see the post above for our e-mail. If you're not already on our e-mail update list and would like to be, simply write us an e-mail and we'll make sure you start receiving our update!
Please do keep us in your prayers. Even though we will have friends in Hangzhou, staying strong will be a challenge and we cherish your support!
We are expecting another child in January and plan to deliver in China. We still don't know the gender of the baby, though Vikki has started to feel the movements.
- Jay and Victoria Beamon
This was supposed to be a twice-a-month update on our family with pictures, etc.
Apparantly, trying to keep up with that in the midst of moving from place to place over the summer was more than we wanted to keep up with.
We've been visiting family all summer, spending the majority of the time with Jay's parents in Mountain Grove, MO. We also spent time with Jay's sister and brother, Nana, Grandmother, and are currently in Aurora, CO with Vikki's older sister.
As for an update on our plans to go to China...we were (surpisingly for us) almost not able to make it this year. We had initially signed contracts with Changzhou Institute of Technology, only to have the school cancel our contract when we informed them that we are expecting another child in January. (More on that later) I didn't realize how different the job search would be now that we're a family and not just two employable bodies...it does make sense that a university would prefer two teachers in one apartment over one with extra responsibility, but I still expected to find a job rather easily. With the search for another job relegated to a matter of months, that probably contributed to the difficulty we encountered. We were, in the end, able to land a position with a school in Hangzhou, very near to the first school. The school is a private university, Zhejiang University City College. We were very excited to get a position in Hangzhou as there are some other friends we know of who will be moving to the city at the same time that we do. We leave on the 18th of this month (in five days!).
We'd love to keep any of you posted on what we're up to, but we don't think we'll have access to this blog in China. Please see the post above for our e-mail. If you're not already on our e-mail update list and would like to be, simply write us an e-mail and we'll make sure you start receiving our update!
Please do keep us in your prayers. Even though we will have friends in Hangzhou, staying strong will be a challenge and we cherish your support!
We are expecting another child in January and plan to deliver in China. We still don't know the gender of the baby, though Vikki has started to feel the movements.
- Jay and Victoria Beamon
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
busy busy
Jay has been doing a long-term sub job for Handley High School since last week and that will continue through Friday...
In the meantime, we are nearing the final stages of contract talks with a school in ChangZhou, Jiangsu province.
We are excited about the job as it should be pretty ideal...however, Vikki is now thinking she can try to work 'full-time' (16 hours/wk.) instead of an original 5-8 hours/wk. Once the contract is finalized, we'll try to get more details up here about the school and city.
Audriana has one more round of shots to do in May...we're holding a couple of garage sales on the 8th-9th and then the 15th-16th as well. It looks like we've got most of the 'major' things arranged and now will just need to work on closing out our tenure in lovely Winchester, VA and making a few minor arrangements in order to get ready for China.
We'll probably be leaving Winchester around the 13th of June.
In the meantime, we are nearing the final stages of contract talks with a school in ChangZhou, Jiangsu province.
We are excited about the job as it should be pretty ideal...however, Vikki is now thinking she can try to work 'full-time' (16 hours/wk.) instead of an original 5-8 hours/wk. Once the contract is finalized, we'll try to get more details up here about the school and city.
Audriana has one more round of shots to do in May...we're holding a couple of garage sales on the 8th-9th and then the 15th-16th as well. It looks like we've got most of the 'major' things arranged and now will just need to work on closing out our tenure in lovely Winchester, VA and making a few minor arrangements in order to get ready for China.
We'll probably be leaving Winchester around the 13th of June.
Friday, April 4, 2008
about time...
Sorry to anyone who keeps up with us for the long interval between posts!
For future reference, you can just request items like posts, pics, or video (family =) and we'll tend to work harder on actually getting it done.
Mom, we actually did try to burn a dvd of Audriana, but technology fails us...
For those of you who are technology literate, and you know how to EASILY take miniDV tapes and create DVDs, we will be much indebted to you for some tips! We've got the firewire port and cable, but the software we have completely failed us! Any recommendations?
We've been especially busy at this time...I'll try to capture it for you in a few words:
Audriana's birthday was great! We were busy while Audriana had her fun (and recovering from colds too), but it was a great time!
Audriana went in for her second round of shots today - the dTap, polio, HepB combo; plus HepA and PCV this time. She wasn't happy by the time the third shot was administered, but she handled it really well - she gave her daddy a high five and we went to Chick-Fil-A to celebrate with a milkshake and to play on the playplace.
Tonight she's at Grammy's and Papaw's while her mother and daddy prepare to leave for a weekend getaway in historic colonial Williamsburg. It's 1:57 a.m. as I write this and I just finished sending data for our required duties for teaching English with NSVAE. It's supposed to rain on us on Saturday, maybe tomorrow too, but we are looking forward to it. We've booked tickets to a AAA Richmond Braves baseball game for Sunday after church.
We need to get pics of Audriana's birthday party and the Williamsburg trip up next!
We're in communication with a school in ChengZhou about a possible job there. It's a 'small' city of 4 million, and they have free language instruction for teachers - so that is a big plus!
We finished a budget for China if anyone is interested, we might throw that up on the blog later - or could e-mail it to anyone as well.
...We're planning to pinch pennies (or fen) a little more this time, but all that means is that we won't be able to take four big vacations a year and instead hope to be able to come back to the states every summer and take a smaller scale vacation during the winter break as well. We just sent off to have more pages added to Jay's passport - turns out he didn't have any blank pages left! China's visas take up a full page to themselves...
In May we're hoping to host a couple of garage sales and try to sell our cars - a '98 Hyundai Elantra and a '95 Chevy Lumina. We found out that the feds should be due to give us $1,700 in tax returns, not counting the economic stimulus package...that's awesome because it pays for a ticket to China! We've already saved over $1,200 for upfront expenses to China...
In other news...Jay made a presentation to the International Student Association on Tuesday about an international student conference coming to our area in May. It was cool to see that some students were actually excited about it! Last year we had just one student go with us on this conference, MOSAIC DC. She is hoping to go again this year and we should have a few more this time as well! We're passing the torch, so to speak, in that we've tried to get some good friends of ours here, Julie and Aaron Clark, to pick up with the international students after we leave. They are also thinking about attending the conference.
Vikki is still keeping busy with scrapbooking, reading novels, volunteering with the food pantry on Wednesdays, teaching classes, and now exercising with a new organization that started in our church - Fit2Serve. She usually does that 2-3 times a week. Audriana still takes up a little of her time too. =)
For future reference, you can just request items like posts, pics, or video (family =) and we'll tend to work harder on actually getting it done.
Mom, we actually did try to burn a dvd of Audriana, but technology fails us...
For those of you who are technology literate, and you know how to EASILY take miniDV tapes and create DVDs, we will be much indebted to you for some tips! We've got the firewire port and cable, but the software we have completely failed us! Any recommendations?
We've been especially busy at this time...I'll try to capture it for you in a few words:
Audriana's birthday was great! We were busy while Audriana had her fun (and recovering from colds too), but it was a great time!
Audriana went in for her second round of shots today - the dTap, polio, HepB combo; plus HepA and PCV this time. She wasn't happy by the time the third shot was administered, but she handled it really well - she gave her daddy a high five and we went to Chick-Fil-A to celebrate with a milkshake and to play on the playplace.
Tonight she's at Grammy's and Papaw's while her mother and daddy prepare to leave for a weekend getaway in historic colonial Williamsburg. It's 1:57 a.m. as I write this and I just finished sending data for our required duties for teaching English with NSVAE. It's supposed to rain on us on Saturday, maybe tomorrow too, but we are looking forward to it. We've booked tickets to a AAA Richmond Braves baseball game for Sunday after church.
We need to get pics of Audriana's birthday party and the Williamsburg trip up next!
We're in communication with a school in ChengZhou about a possible job there. It's a 'small' city of 4 million, and they have free language instruction for teachers - so that is a big plus!
We finished a budget for China if anyone is interested, we might throw that up on the blog later - or could e-mail it to anyone as well.
...We're planning to pinch pennies (or fen) a little more this time, but all that means is that we won't be able to take four big vacations a year and instead hope to be able to come back to the states every summer and take a smaller scale vacation during the winter break as well. We just sent off to have more pages added to Jay's passport - turns out he didn't have any blank pages left! China's visas take up a full page to themselves...
In May we're hoping to host a couple of garage sales and try to sell our cars - a '98 Hyundai Elantra and a '95 Chevy Lumina. We found out that the feds should be due to give us $1,700 in tax returns, not counting the economic stimulus package...that's awesome because it pays for a ticket to China! We've already saved over $1,200 for upfront expenses to China...
In other news...Jay made a presentation to the International Student Association on Tuesday about an international student conference coming to our area in May. It was cool to see that some students were actually excited about it! Last year we had just one student go with us on this conference, MOSAIC DC. She is hoping to go again this year and we should have a few more this time as well! We're passing the torch, so to speak, in that we've tried to get some good friends of ours here, Julie and Aaron Clark, to pick up with the international students after we leave. They are also thinking about attending the conference.
Vikki is still keeping busy with scrapbooking, reading novels, volunteering with the food pantry on Wednesdays, teaching classes, and now exercising with a new organization that started in our church - Fit2Serve. She usually does that 2-3 times a week. Audriana still takes up a little of her time too. =)
Saturday, March 8, 2008
getting ready for the one year birthday...
We are poised to celebrate Audriana's birthday next week on March 15th. Her birthday is not until the 20th, of course, but it fit easier on the schedule to do it on the 15th. The following weekend we are getting ready to celebrate an Easter party with international students at Shenandoah University.
Everytime I look at pictures of Audriana, it strikes me funny that older pictures of her now look different compared to the little girl that is growing up before my very eyes. Her five month pictures suddenly looked too babyish just yesterday.
We were out at Red Hot & Blue (a wonderful barbeque chain) last night - also to celebrate Audriana's birthday...they gave us a $10 coupon - and we were amused that Audriana still likes to try to eat lemons. I gave her a lemon when she was little and she's loved trying to eat them ever since. Eventually she should grow out of that, but that's one of the memories of the past year that we've enjoyed.
Seeing her walk around is a hoot. Since she's been walking since she was 10 months old, she's gotten quite good at it now - and to see such a little tike bobble around is very fun.
We're staying pretty busy...Vikki has been working more hours teaching ESL recently. Beyond her 5 hours a week that she teaches, we budgeted her to try to supplement our income an additional $75 a month. She's going to be teaching 6 additional classes in the next month as a substitute for other teachers. She works out twice a week with other moms at church, and goes to the church food pantry to help out once a week. Jay is busy with subbing, teaching, getting ready for China, international students, family time, and trying to organize some upcoming trips. He meets with another Christian guy every week and they're looking at planning a camping/hiking trip together with some other guys as well. He's also trying to help coordinate a get-together of some friends from Harding either in April or this summer. We're planning a trip to Williamsburg as well to reward ourselves for minimally exercising four days a week. We're also trying to decide if we'll have time to make it to an orientation for others preparing to go to China at the end of May...and we want to have a couple of garage sales before we hope to spend time with Jay's family in MO/AR/TX this summer. We'll see how much we can actually do - we had initially wanted to go to a seminar today for people interested in pursuing a career in missions, but that was scratched when we didn't make time to prepare this week for it and Jay came down with some sniffles last night.
In all the hustle bustle, it's hard to make sure that we're getting all our priorities straight...I feel as if we're doing a good job - but I guess not always as there are times every once in a while where we feel stretched perhaps too much...and I want things like faith and family to take a dominant role in what we do...but I wonder how much they actually play out sometimes. Like, take for example, the fact that I wanted to do a 21 day purposed time to seek God at the beginning of this year. How hard it seems to be able to make a focused effort for something that I consider to be so vitally important. I didn't make it very far into that 21 days - life has a way of sort of taking over...despite our best intentions to arrange it the way we want. In some ways, I've felt renewed in my relationship with the Lord recently - which I find interesting in that it comes at a time where I've read His word and spent time in prayer less than perhaps any time that I can remember since college.
We've got three more months of probable busyness, in which we should be able to get the rest of our items on our to-do list checked off for China...a budget, a teaching job, a school to attend for language study, shots for Audriana, among other odd purchases and decisions before we'll spend at least a year at a University in China trying to see...whether the situation at that school did indeed suit everything we want as far as budget, environment, and proximity to a good language school we like are concerned...I'm preparing myself to have a year of exploration our first year where we try to adjust to all the new factors in life and if it didn't work out quite the way we want it to, to have time to prepare to change it by the following year at a different school (for teaching or study)...
Everytime I look at pictures of Audriana, it strikes me funny that older pictures of her now look different compared to the little girl that is growing up before my very eyes. Her five month pictures suddenly looked too babyish just yesterday.
We were out at Red Hot & Blue (a wonderful barbeque chain) last night - also to celebrate Audriana's birthday...they gave us a $10 coupon - and we were amused that Audriana still likes to try to eat lemons. I gave her a lemon when she was little and she's loved trying to eat them ever since. Eventually she should grow out of that, but that's one of the memories of the past year that we've enjoyed.
Seeing her walk around is a hoot. Since she's been walking since she was 10 months old, she's gotten quite good at it now - and to see such a little tike bobble around is very fun.
We're staying pretty busy...Vikki has been working more hours teaching ESL recently. Beyond her 5 hours a week that she teaches, we budgeted her to try to supplement our income an additional $75 a month. She's going to be teaching 6 additional classes in the next month as a substitute for other teachers. She works out twice a week with other moms at church, and goes to the church food pantry to help out once a week. Jay is busy with subbing, teaching, getting ready for China, international students, family time, and trying to organize some upcoming trips. He meets with another Christian guy every week and they're looking at planning a camping/hiking trip together with some other guys as well. He's also trying to help coordinate a get-together of some friends from Harding either in April or this summer. We're planning a trip to Williamsburg as well to reward ourselves for minimally exercising four days a week. We're also trying to decide if we'll have time to make it to an orientation for others preparing to go to China at the end of May...and we want to have a couple of garage sales before we hope to spend time with Jay's family in MO/AR/TX this summer. We'll see how much we can actually do - we had initially wanted to go to a seminar today for people interested in pursuing a career in missions, but that was scratched when we didn't make time to prepare this week for it and Jay came down with some sniffles last night.
In all the hustle bustle, it's hard to make sure that we're getting all our priorities straight...I feel as if we're doing a good job - but I guess not always as there are times every once in a while where we feel stretched perhaps too much...and I want things like faith and family to take a dominant role in what we do...but I wonder how much they actually play out sometimes. Like, take for example, the fact that I wanted to do a 21 day purposed time to seek God at the beginning of this year. How hard it seems to be able to make a focused effort for something that I consider to be so vitally important. I didn't make it very far into that 21 days - life has a way of sort of taking over...despite our best intentions to arrange it the way we want. In some ways, I've felt renewed in my relationship with the Lord recently - which I find interesting in that it comes at a time where I've read His word and spent time in prayer less than perhaps any time that I can remember since college.
We've got three more months of probable busyness, in which we should be able to get the rest of our items on our to-do list checked off for China...a budget, a teaching job, a school to attend for language study, shots for Audriana, among other odd purchases and decisions before we'll spend at least a year at a University in China trying to see...whether the situation at that school did indeed suit everything we want as far as budget, environment, and proximity to a good language school we like are concerned...I'm preparing myself to have a year of exploration our first year where we try to adjust to all the new factors in life and if it didn't work out quite the way we want it to, to have time to prepare to change it by the following year at a different school (for teaching or study)...
The picture above is from Elijah Clark's one-year birthday that we recently helped celebrate. We're getting ready to have our own celebration in a week!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The last two days we had freezing rain and snow, so no school. Jay has been trying to catch up on missed work for having gone on a three week vacation during the Christmas holiday, and had been picking up sub jobs at pretty much every opportunity.
Today we finished some resumes for China and customized a wall map of China detailing where several of our friends are located. Mostly we know people in Changsha (where we spent our first three years), Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Shenzhen, and Changde.
Today we finished some resumes for China and customized a wall map of China detailing where several of our friends are located. Mostly we know people in Changsha (where we spent our first three years), Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Shenzhen, and Changde.
Click the links below if you'd like to view our resumes:
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Finally...
Wow - technology has not been my friend lately. Blogger had this new enticing ability to add a slideshow to your blog...I thought that would be easier than using Webshots as I had been doing to import pictures. I was wrong!
We recently won a laptop off eBay. We may have saved $100 off the retail price by doing so, but it still remains to be seen whether it was a good deal for us. We think the laptop was formerly a store model. Everything seems to be good except the period key sticks. The original retail price was $869 and we ended up paying about $475 with a three-year warranty included. But...technology has not been my friend. The laptop is another preparation for China, but we thought we'd go ahead and get it now so that we could both use a computer at the same time, especially for lesson planning for our ESL classes. I was hastily preparing a lesson plan prior to Monday night's class only to find that it is extremely difficult to transfer files from my unregistered trial version of Word to our desktop.
...
Audriana had her first shots last Thursday (Feb. 8th), and she handled it like a pro. She wimpered only a little, which was much better than how her mother felt! Vikki has been very careful and studious in researching shots and the potential harmful effects of immunizations. While it seems that the medical community has made advances with avoiding harmful side-effects, it was still nerve-wracking for Vikki to go through with it. The reality is that we fear diseases in China more than we do the side-effects of the immunizations. She had a combinations shot of dTap, polio, and Hep B - which we didn't know they did that prior to going in. The nurse at the Health Dept. was a little concerned about our aversion to immunizations, but after she realized that we had researched our position and that we were relatively firm, was pleasant enough. We are still delaying some shots that she was eligible for on the 8th. She'll go back at 12 and a half months (April 3rd) to get her next round.
We recently won a laptop off eBay. We may have saved $100 off the retail price by doing so, but it still remains to be seen whether it was a good deal for us. We think the laptop was formerly a store model. Everything seems to be good except the period key sticks. The original retail price was $869 and we ended up paying about $475 with a three-year warranty included. But...technology has not been my friend. The laptop is another preparation for China, but we thought we'd go ahead and get it now so that we could both use a computer at the same time, especially for lesson planning for our ESL classes. I was hastily preparing a lesson plan prior to Monday night's class only to find that it is extremely difficult to transfer files from my unregistered trial version of Word to our desktop.
...
Audriana had her first shots last Thursday (Feb. 8th), and she handled it like a pro. She wimpered only a little, which was much better than how her mother felt! Vikki has been very careful and studious in researching shots and the potential harmful effects of immunizations. While it seems that the medical community has made advances with avoiding harmful side-effects, it was still nerve-wracking for Vikki to go through with it. The reality is that we fear diseases in China more than we do the side-effects of the immunizations. She had a combinations shot of dTap, polio, and Hep B - which we didn't know they did that prior to going in. The nurse at the Health Dept. was a little concerned about our aversion to immunizations, but after she realized that we had researched our position and that we were relatively firm, was pleasant enough. We are still delaying some shots that she was eligible for on the 8th. She'll go back at 12 and a half months (April 3rd) to get her next round.
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