Well, Mary and I finally fought our way out of the Vortex that surrounds the St. Cloud area after battling for six and 16 years respectively. As of August 23rd, 2006, driving east without giving it a second thought or looking back once to see if God decided to send fire, sulphur, and brimestone flaming down from the sky to obliterate that rotten meat of the earth, we have been freed; our only wish is that everyone else will make it out alive and that they'll awaken quickly to the current conditions there. Before we left St. Cloud yesterday we spent the last week packing boxes, cleaning, and painting.

We rented a storage unit from Public Storage in Sauk Rapids; it would have been closer, but it was the only storage company in the surrounding communities that accepted payment online which is important to us if we want to save money by not wiring money internationally, it's either that, or forcing someone to keep some of our checks and pay the bill. There was very little that we ended up keeping anyway; when we come back from China we'll move cross-country to Portland, OR and wanted to make it as simple as possible as well as keeping the monthly rent low as we will be some poor folks for the next year, so a 5x15 unit was what we ended up choosing. A special thanks to Mary's family for helping us move out the heavy stuff like our bed, the couches which we gave to savers, and the computer desk Mary's brother and girlfriend took to their apartment in Menomonie(?).

But the cleaning turned out to be the most time-consuming and difficult part of moving mostly because I have this disorder that makes me hate having to clean anything which I have lived with most of my life is you ask my parents. We rented a six yard dumpster from the dumpster company and with all the trash we had accumulated over the years we filled the damn thing straight to the brim so if anybody is looking for some good junk just drive on over and see if the bin is still there.

It's strange to think that the painting was actually the easiest and fastest part of the move out. We dreaded doing it for a good month even going as far as hiring a painter to do just the two rooms for $350! I am glad we didn't because we could seriously use the cash we saved and in the end it only took us six hours to paint two coats for each room downstairs and the single wall in the "Dead Room", my music room.

So overall, the only thing that really sucked about moving out was having to sleep a night on our floor with just the sleeping bags and no pillows. For two other nights we spent them on the couches of our good friends Dave and Kari and that gave us an excuse to hang out with them a little more before we left. Well, to be honest, I guess the worst aspect of this move is that we will be leaving our friends who made St. Cloud just a bit more bareable, so to all of you thanks for creating a shelter from within the storm.

So what is the clan up to now and what's next? Just hanging out with Mary's family in St. Croix Falls, WI having fun and waiting for the permision materials to come so we can head to Chicago to get our Visas and fly out, that's it. Hopefully the next post will be from our apartment in Shaoxing! Bye. Zai jian.