Trip back to Mongolia

Our trip back was a little over 24 hours!! Usually we have 32-38 hours of travel.  Our flights were smooth on Korean Airlines.  Our bags all arrived with us as well. Unfortunately, we do not have any pictures for this post. The pictures we took were on Joshua's phone and the pictures all saved to his phone and we have yet to figure out how to get them off.

    We arrived and Odko was at the airport to get us!  Pam Salmons, one of my dearest friends was there too to greet us and welcome us back!  We got hugs and then we loaded our bags into Odko's new van and headed to our new home.  Some of our previous teammates had yet to finish moving out, but enough was out to fit our bags and allow us to go to bed.  The next morning we helped move one of the guys out of the apartment, then went to the storage container to get the rest of our things, and after moving all of our things into our apartment on the 9th floor we went grocery shopping with Pam.  We were pooped!  Below is a tour of our new apartment!  We live 30 minutes walking distance from MIU!  We can also take almost any bus to and from the school, so that makes it a lot easier to catch a bus.
     If you'd like to view a tour of our new apartment click the following link.    The only thing that has changed since this video is our new washing machine since our old one quit working on us.  Doing laundry in the bathtub is doable, but not much fun.

End of trip and Goodbyes to Sally

After we finished up at Wheaton we headed south to Jennifer's parents.  We stayed with them for a little over a week before heading back down to Huntsville for final preps for our journey back to UB.  While with John and Brenda we had a family cookout at Jennifer's Grandpa Simpson's house where many congregated together to see us.  We also took the opportunity of spending most of one of our days with some really close and great friends that live in a nearby town.  Our time as always felt too short.  After returning to Huntsville the first order of business was to get Sally washed up and ready to sell.  

She really sparkles and shines!

We are going to miss having our car when we do visit the states again. However, with 2 years including the summer being spent in Mongolia we thought it best to sell Sally.  We don't know how long exactly we will be in Mongolia, but we have felt that it will be at least 5 years.  Tears have been shed and we are still awaiting the sale of Sally.

Wheaton Graduation and Grad Party

The graduation service for the summer students was held in the Billy Graham Center Rotund.  This room is very ornate with really pretty banner hanging down, as you can see from the pictures below.  This is a kind of farewell service for those graduating.  They each have a chance to get up and talk for approx. 2 minutes giving thanks to those that supported them through the program and also giving a brief what the future looks like for them.  

We were both excited at his finishing his MA!

This is a picture of all the graduates.  Will is holding his son who was born after he and his wife completed their first semester.  So, Ezra was with them through it all.  

This is a few of the core people here.  Most of us joined and started the program at the same time.  The journey at times was rough, but we all made it!

 "The Castle"  Blanchard building makes a great background for a picture (below)!

These are our friends working in Vietnam.  Joshua became good friends with the guys and the girls are precious friends of Jennifer's.  We only see each other once a year though.

posing outside of the BGC

We just had to have our picture taken with the director of the TESOL program, Dr. Alan  Seaman.

 Excited to be finished!

Here's the grad himself looking good in the graduation gown getup!

Yippeeeeeee!  I'm finished!

Now for the party!  We all gathered at one of the apartments on campus and had a little party.  We had Chicago style deep dish pizza with salad and a cake with purposeful grammatical errors on it.  There was also a white elephant gift exchange for the graduating seniors only.  Below are all the pictures to show the amount of fun we had!

More than just people from our organization were there for classes.  We enjoyed sharing this time as they have gone and were/are going through the program as well.  It was a blast to get to fellowship with so many different people!

Joshua is enjoying his pizza!

Fun gifts all around!

This is the type of gift that just suites his personality and the fun that we were all having.

The grads with their new treasures

After the party we went back over to our apartment and Joshua opened his presents from me.  Of course it could not be a momentous occasion without legos of some kind!

I just couldn't resist getting this to mark the completion of his MA. 

This shows how many people attended classes with him this summer.  A great group of people! 

Wheaton time: campus and babysitting

Below are some pictures of campus and of one of our favorite buildings. . .The Wade Center.  The Wade Center houses one of the largest collections of C.S. Lewis literature and that of his contemporaries.  There is also a museum with the desk C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien in it along with other various artifacts belonging to them both.

We decided that we wanted to take an adventure in Narnia as well.  However it didn't work.  Bummer :(

While Joshua was in class everyday I got to hang out with one of the cutest and best behaved little boys ever.  Jacob was such a joy to watch.  His parents were both in all the classes with Joshua every day.  We really enjoyed going to the park in the mornings since the afternoon was way too hot for either of us to be outside for very long.

Peek-a-boo!