Miss Becky's Blog

We Are HOME!

Thanks to all of you for your kindness to us as we finished the semester and prepared to leave. It is always with mixed emotions we leave China -- sad to leave so many wonderful friends there, but happy to return to our family and friends in America.

Ken and I left Nanjing on Sunday, June 20th. Thanks to all of you for the kindness you

We flew from Nanjing to Beijing and were sooooo impressed with the new airport there -- it is huge, very spacious, well organized, new and clean! From there we flew to San Francisco where we had lunch and a visit with our son, Brady, who lives and works in that area before our flight to Salt Lake City. We were met at the Salt Lake City airport by a daughter and two grand daughters. After almost 24 hours of travel we arrived at our home in Logan, Utah.

This is the poster that greeted us at our home in Logan, made by our grandchildren who live with us:

It's a tradition in our family to post "welcome" signs when a family member returns after being gone for a long while.

It took us both several days to adjust to the time difference and we did not sleep much the first few nights. Then we went up the mountains (just a 15 minute drive from our home) to our cabin, where it's nice and cool and quiet and we slept for about 12 hours!!! That seemed to do the trick and we are adjusted to the time here.

The mountains are beautiful and we love the clean, fresh air and sunshine -- we see clear blue sky most summer days here. I think that's one of the things I miss most when we are in China. The temperatures have been a little cooler here this summer, but in July it started getting warmer, however it does not FEEL as hot as in Nanjing because it's so dry here.

The following Sunday I took our oldest grandson, Baylor (14 years old) to Salt Lake City to meet our second grandson, McKay (13) who flew from his home in Arizona so the two of them could attend a basketball camp at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah together. We drove there and checked into a motel near the university where I stayed with the boys to get them to the camp on time and pick them up at night, get them food, to bed, clean their clothes, attended some of their games, etc.

McKay Wilson and Baylor Mitchell on the BYU campus. Note the white letter "Y" on the mountain behind them. That has been a logo for the university for over a 100 years. This is the university that Ken and I were attending when we met and married before we had graduated. So it's always great to return -- not only is it a large beautiful campus, but the place holds many special memories for us. During the camp, the boys were assigned to teams by age and played several games to practice the things they were being taught. Ken came and spent one night with us so he could see a couple of their games.

While in Provo, I also got to visit with my Brother Craig who works at BYU and my cousin who has a grand daughter who is involved in a special school program where she started learning Chinese in first grade last year. Her class is taught in Chinese half the day and in English the other half. She will continue studying Chinese each year of school in Elementary or Primary school. She's doing really well and loving it and I brought her some special things from China.

Our daughter, Amy (McKay's mother) and her two younger sons (Jack and Gavin) arrived in Provo Thursday evening so after getting the boys pizza for their dinner, I returned to Logan, stopping in Salt Lake City to see a very special friend that I had not seen since returning. We had dinner and a great visit catching up with lots of things that had happened in her life while I was gone. Amy kept all the boys in Provo where her husband, Scott joined them and they visited some of his relatives there and attended some special celebrations for the 4th of July.

Our son, K.C. and his family drove to Logan, arriving before I returned, from Las Vegas, Nevada where they live. It was so great to see them. We were really blessed to have all the members of our immediate family, except our daughter who lives in Boston and was finishing her dissertation for her PhD, come to Logan to celebrate the 4th of July with us and welcome us home!!! It was wonderful and I'll share more information and pictures about that in my next post.