I (eee) Got an Ayi

Yesterday we hired a part-time ayi (maid). Or she may have hired us... I'm not sure exactly what happened haha.

We had dropped into our school for a minute to set up water delivery to our apartment but we actually walked into the middle of an ayi interview hiring session! We'd been following an outdated schedule that the school gave us and totally overlooked the interviews. Luckily, we'd already gone through the resumes and told them which potential ayi's we'd like to interview (all the ones that said they like pets). We were sat down with the first lady and we liked her from the get go. She just had a really kind face. There were supposed to be people there to translate the interviews, but they were busy, so we set about interviewing her alone- us using broken Chinese and her using broken English. At one point she pulled out her phone and her friend Bobo translated for us, which was quite helpful. Thank you, Bobo.

In the end we agreed on a price that is less than 1% of our monthly wage, and she'll come twice a week to do laundry, dishes, scoop the cat litter, and clean a bit. We hit a snag at the end of the interview when it came to discussing the training time. We needed to be home for her first visit to show her around the apartment and how we'd like things done. She decided that she would get our school's housing liaison, Jack, to translate for us. The only problem is that Jack was already helping a line of about 5 other foreign teachers. Our ayi didnt' care- she stormed to the front of the line and forced him to translate for us. I was seriously too embarrassed to speak, and a couple of the teachers in line were being dicks about it. "I've got a wife and kids here. Hurry up" and rolling their eyes and shit. So, yeah we're already making friends, but if something like that bothered them so much they're not going to last long in China anyway.

So, tomorrow night, after our first day (!) of training we are training our ayi. She'll be coming in the mornings when we're at work, so we probably won't see her much, but I have a feeling she's going to make a huge difference in our lives.Oh, and the water arrived yesterday too. And an oven. And now I have someone to clean them. What more could a person want?

UPDATE: Our ayi quit before she even started! Wednesday night, just before she was supposed to come over for training, another teacher we hadn't met before called us. She can speak a little Chinese and our ayi also works for her. She said that the ayi felt like she had taken on too much work and wouldn't be able to work for us too. She said the ayi knew another ayi friend she could introduce to us so we agreed, and they both came over last night.

New ayi is nice too (anyone willing to wash my dishes is nice). We went over what we needed done and showed her around the apartment and she's going to start this morning. Can't wait to come home to a spotless apartment!

Oh, and the original ayi also revealed to us why she is so overworked. After cleaning for the other teacher who called us, she then works the rest of the day for our principal. She said that his family is "too tall" and she has to cook so much food for them that she's exhausted. Oh, the life of an ayi,

UPDATE #2: As of September 1st, Ayi has been bumped up to 4 times a week and now she's cooking for us too. It's just way too nice to come home to ironed, folded underwear to only do so twice a week :)

Orientation

After you land in a new country, finding your way around and getting your bearings is always the funnest part. You seriously learn more in your first few days abroad than you might for the entire rest of your stay. Of course, this is always easier with help, and this time around we've relied on a mixture of our own research, and assistance from our more seasoned co-workers to find our way around.

After we got to our apartment, we were still feeling alright (despite the long trip), so the people that met us from our work offered to walk us to the school and we took them up on it. It's about a 20 minute walk, but very simple- just straight up one street then turn left- and they were able to point out a number of useful places along the way. The best places along that route are Sea World, a landlocked ship full of restaurants, and a subway station. Afterwards, on our walk back home, we strolled the grounds of our apartment complex. The bottom floor of all the apartment buildings near the road have little restaurants, massage parlors, pet stores, and foreign food shops that were good to explore.

The next day, on our first full day in Shekou, we walked back to the school and met all the other new teachers who had arrived so far. There was about 8 families in total (our school mainly hires couples), and we were taken around to register for the internet, get visa photos taken, buy bus/subway passes, and get cell phones (we'd unlocked ours from home so we just needed cheap $8 SIM cards). It was really helpful to be walked through these things by someone who speaks English! In the past we've had to take care of most of that stuff ourselves, which can be frustrating to a newcomer.

A sign at the shop where we registered for internet.

Our school also gave us a bunch of laminated cards for places like the hospital, Wal-Mart, and the school to use in taxis that say "please drive me to ______" on them in Mandarin. Each card also lists the buses that take you to the locations, so after setting up our phones and internet, we went to Wal-Mart to buy some things for our apartment. Of course, we caught the bus on the wrong side of the road the first time, but it wasn't a big deal- we just got back on the right way after a few minutes. It only costs 30 cents to ride the bus here! The Wal-Mart is about 10-15 minutes away by bus, and it's connected to a really nice looking mall that we didn't have much time to explore that day. Wal-Mart is 2 floors and full of some cheap things (25 cent beer) and some overpriced things ($35 for a toaster!), but costings are going to be different here, aren't they?

We bought Smeell brand toilet paper at Wal-Mart.

And I got some Fido Dido flip flops.

The next day we walked to a street one block (5 minutes) from our apartment to do some exploring. There was a lot of little shops, restaurants (a Korean place AND a Taiwanese place!), and two big department stores: A-Best and RenRenLe, which are almost as good as Wal-Mart and so much closer.

The RenRenLe has a "Wine & Emotion" department.

Also, at RenRenLe, something awesome happened.We were waiting in line at the cash, and there were several people waiting behind us. Just as we got to the front and were about to start loading our things on the belt, this guy steps in front of a small space in front of us, puts his things on the belt and decides he is the next person in line. I know that lineups are every man for himself in China, but this was hilarious. Then, Melodie did something amazing. She looked at him, said "no", and pushed his things to the back of the belt and started loading our things ahead of his. Then he actually started helping us pull things from our cart and put them on the belt for us. It was SO WEIRD. Two days in China and Mel's already running the joint.

The next day I used BING on my phone (stupid phone has no VPN so we can't use google on it. I never thought I'd be relying on Bing in my life lol) to get directions to IKEA. It's actually pretty close- about 20 minutes by subway, then 10 by bus. The transfer between subway and bus takes place at an interesting area called Window of the World (a theme park with miniature versions of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, etc) that we'll have to go back to. At Ikea, we got some meatballs and then picked up a few more things we really needed for our apartment. Unfortunately, it closed before we could finish so we had to go back the next day to complete our shopping. See HERE for why we were so late getting to IKEA that night.

Then yesterday, we had a meeting at our school to learn more about hiring an ayi (a maid). We'll be interviewing them this week, so they just let us know the ins and outs of employing an ayi. I can't believe I am going to be employing someone. I couldn't even hardly find employment for myself this summer! After the meeting, we were invited out to dinner with a couple that will be teaching ESL with Mel. It was a lot of fun! They showed us an amazing Chinese restaurant that's only about a 10 minute walk from our place. Everything we ate was delicious, and even thinking about it now is starting to make me drool. It was just wicked.

Kind of forgot about how chicken is served in Chinese countries when I ordered the chicken/noodle/potato thing. It came with the head :x

The coolest thing was that these other teachers drive scooters and they took us all over town on them, pointing out interesting things along the way. We even went to a Korean coffee shop and spoke Hangul with the owners. Thanks to this scooter tour, I could literally see a neighborhood map beginning to form in my mind. Everything is starting to sink in. We're getting our bearings, slowly but surely, and I like what I see.

Getting the Internet in China

We've found that once you move to a new place, you don't really feel settled until your internet is hooked up. This goes for anywhere you move, doesn't it? It's so key to finding your way around and keeping in touch. As most people know, the way the internet works in China is very different than at home, so I thought I'd write a little bit about the process of getting it set up.

First, our school took us to a shop where we had to provide copies of our passports, our address, and a full YEAR'S advance payment in cash. This worked out to be about $350 for the year, which is maybe 25% less than at home but with about 50% less useful websites available. This is because the internet in China is heavily censored. Facebook, youtube, google, gmail, even this blog are banned. If you try to go to these URLs you will get a "this page cannot be displayed" message. So, to get around this, you have to subscribe to a VPN, which is a simple program that tricks the internet into thinking you're in another country outside of China. Of course, the sites where you subscribe to VPNs are blocked in China too, so we subscribed to ours before we left home.

 Back to how we got the internet: we were told that the internet guys would show up the next day between 4-5pm, which is a much more specific window than the 9-5 you get at home. We were really pleased, but when they hadn't shown up by 7pm we were getting less impressed. When they did show up, they mucked about for an hour- literally just shoving thermometers into phone jacks and stringing wires up all over the place. They didn't even bring a modem with them, which I should have taken as a sign. Then around 8pm, one of the guys said something in Chinese and started packing up to leave. We got someone from our school on the phone and he translated for us: it was too late, so the guys were going home. They would be back the next day between 9-9:30am. WTF.

The next morning, around 10:30am a different guy showed up with modem boxes in his hands which us feel much more optimistic! After about 15 minutes he had everything hooked up and we were good to go. He showed us how to use everything (we got cable too)and tried to speak English with us, and when he didn't know how to explain one thing (why my ipod wifi wasn't working- you need a router for mobile devices) he got someone on the phone to translate for us. It was sweet.

And then he walked out, leaving all this shit on the floor. But honestly, I hadn't been on facebook for 3 1/2 days so I didn't notice for quite a while.

Our Apartment

After we arrived in Hong Kong, we were picked up by a driver who took us through the Chinese border and onward to our apartment in Shekou. We're only about a 5 minute drive from the border, so no wonder they flew us into Hong Kong! When we got here we were met by Jack (local staff who's in charge of assiting staff with apartments and settling in) and Lisa (an American who will be my director of instruction at the elementary school). 

 

We live in a complex called Coastal Rose Garden and we're on the 9th floor. The complex is really huge, with dozens of apartment buildings, and it stretches all along the waterfront overlooking Hong Kong.

 

When we got here there was an awesome gift basket full of valuable items for any newcomer: maps, guide books, toilet paper, chips, juice, wine, milk, water, towels and lots of other things. It was really, really nice of the school to provide these things for us.

My first impression was that the apartment was huge, especially compared to what we were given in Korea. This place is twice the size of our apartment in Ontario too, and it's FREE. So, let me go ahead and give you a tour:

In this picture, our front door is on the right hand side. There's a shoe closet right there and the dining room table on the left. The first entrance on the right is the kitchen and on the left is a weird little room mostly full of stuff from the previous tenants. We're keeping that door shut :D 

 

Example of creepy art left behind in that little room.

This is our kitchen. Pretty normal. Lots of counter space, but not a lot of usable cupboard space. We were pleasantly surprised that there was a microwave (one less thing to buy!), and not at all surprised by the lack of an oven (one more thing to buy!).

This is the living room- it's on the opposite side of the dining room. It came with a sofa (never had one of those before overseas!), a TV and DVD player with surround sound, and (most strangely) a piano.

 

The living room, from the other side.

 

 There's a huge balcony off the living room with a washing machine on it...

 

...and THIS is our amazing view from the balcony.

 

This is the hallway leading from the living/dining room area down to the bedrooms.

 

This is the spare bedroom. Lots of room for visitors *HINT HINT*. Currently being used to store cat things and the ironing board.

 

Across from the spare bedroom is the office. There's a desk and lot of storage space in there.

At the end of the hall is this pretty typical Asian bathroom, but better than we've ever had simply due to the size and the existence of a shower curtain to keep everything from getting wet!

Here's our bedroom! It's awesome! We have a king sized bed, and light switches on either side that control his and hers lamps. There's also SO MUCH cabinet space to store all of our clothes.

 

This is the amazing view from our bedroom. We can see Hong Kong from our bed. Crazy!

 And this is my favorite part. The biggest surprise of all. In the master bathroom we have a JACUZZI. Can you believe it? A jacuzzi! A jacuzzi with a CD player! In our Korean apartment we once bought an inflatable kid's pool just to take a bath.

Also, all the fixtures in this bathroom are glass so it looks really nice in there. We love it.

 

Like I said earlier, the grounds of Coastal Rose Garden are huge. There's a boardwalk that goes all along the water. On the grounds, we're lucky enough to have a pool that we can use any time, a gym, ping pong and tennis courts, and every building has a row of shops in it. And almost all the shops of full of foreign import goods and restaurants. It's literally amazing.

 

Rude statue outside our building.

And we're just a block away from a great shopping and dining area. But I'll post more about that later. It's going to be tough exploring China if we never want to leave our apartment!

How To Move To China

1. Revive your blog.

 2. Tie up loose ends. If you have a job (Melodie), go directly from your students’ graduation ceremony to packing up your apartment to leaving town within 18 hours. If you’re an unemployed bum (me), pack and clean like there’s no tomorrow. Donate everything to the Salvation Army. Hide the stuff they didn’t want in the apartment dumpsters (sorry). Stuff two cars to the absolute brim with about half of the items you moved in with. Then sell the car. Downsizing is good.

3. Go to home # 1 to see friends and family. In our case, we drove 6 hours from Kingston to Quebec City, spent the night, and then drove the last 8 hours to Mel’s parents in New Brunswick. Because of Mel’s job, we had less time than we wanted for visiting at home, but work is a necessary evil. We enjoyed a family BBQ at Mel’s parents’ house, visits with her Grampy, and a bonfire with friends.

4. Get inundated with errands and paperwork. We had to do lots of little things that ate up a lot of time. For example, I had to renew my license, we had to get a year’s worth of our prescription allergy meds, and we had to take our cat for his final vet visit. The final vet visit was important because, within 14 days of his travel, we had to have some documents filled out by a vet and then have them certified by a government vet. This turned out to be a stressful experience, because our New Brunswick vet was unfamiliar with the paperwork and hesitant to fill it out since he’d most recently lived in Ontario (she couldn’t verify that the area is rabies-free, a key part of the paperwork). They called our Ontario vet, who refused to fill out the paperwork because they hadn’t seen him since his microchipping in April. On top of that, the local vet was hyper-paranoid because his microchip wouldn’t scan and she couldn’t prove that our cat was really who we said he was. We actually got sent to 4 vets over the course of 6 hours, but in the end we got it worked out: his microchip hadn’t scanned because it was American, but the vet was able to verify his identity with the chip company, and CFIA was able to verify that Ontario is rabies-free. So now, hopefully, he’ll arrive the day after us. But there’s no guarantee: the weather is so hot in Hong Kong that there’s been flight embargos on and off all summer. We already miss our little guy!

5. Go to home #2 to see family and friends. After 5 days in New Brunswick with Mel’s family, we went to my parent’s house in Nova Scotia. En route, we stopped to see our friend in Moncton, and Mel’s cousin in Halifax. My brother flew in that night, so it was cool to have the whole family home at the same time. Over the next few days, we went to Upper Clements Park (an amusement park), had dinner with grammy and my aunt and uncle, hiked to Crystal Falls, had a bonfire at the beach, and spent a day in Halifax.

6. Age. I turned 31 when I was home. I wonder if I’ll still be messing about in Asia when I’m 41?

7. Run out of time. Our visit home was over so fast! On our last day, Me, Mel, my brother and all of our parents met in Halifax for a last dinner of- what else?- Chinese food. We all stayed at a hotel next to the airport since our flight (and my brother’s flight) was so early, so we had some beers and swam and tried to relax. I was feeling really tired that night, but as soon as I hit the bed my heart started beating super fast and I began stressing. Mel has revealed that she cried (she always has a travel cry). It was probably 1am before I got to sleep, and we were up again by 5 to head to the airport.

8. Have a smooth trip. I can’t complain at all about our trip. These flights are soooo long (18 hours) and neither of us like to fly, but really, both legs of our flight were smooth pretty much the whole way. We even lucked out with our bags- we’d weighed them a dozen times, but at the airport one of them was underweight and we were allowed to stuff it full of all the “maybe” items I’d had my mom bring in with her. Then when a couple of other bags were slightly overweight the Air Canada lady was totally cool about it. “Who cares?” she said. We’d been stressing those bags! On our first trip to Korea, we’d been allowed two 70lb bags. I distinctly remember packing a frying pan LOL!! Now you get one single 50lb bag. Downsizing sucks. And, sure, an 18 hour flight is boring, but we’d been so busy lately we hadn’t been able to watch any of our favorite shows, so I had a laptop full of good stuff for us to watch. And look, I’ve even killed 30 minutes typing up this blog :D

We’ll be landing in Hong Kong in another 3 ½ hours. We’re almost there! After we go through customs and get our bags, we have instructions to meet a driver with a KEDDY sign in front of *quote* “Burger’s King”. Can’t wait to melt in the heat, see our apartment, and get some sleep! China, here we come!  

Moving Day- From Kingston to Kingston

The current contents of our apartment: laptop, two tent chairs, a desk (bound for the dumpster tomorrow), an air mattress, a half eaten bag of chips, and a cat. And a major echo. Can't say I'll miss the apartment here very much- although it's laid out well, quiet, and sized perfectly for us- there's no AC and the temperatures in our living room have been over 30 degrees for the last 3 months straight. It's kind of sucked!


The cars are all packed up, and tomorrow morning we're moving from Kingston; our home for the last 11 months. Mel's parents have driven up and kindly loaded their car full of our crap. We've downsized quite a bit and thrown out almost all of our furniture. When we moved up here we had 2 cars and a trailer, this time moving back we just have 2 cars.

Tomorrow, we're driving 6 hours to Quebec City, where we'll spend the night in Old Quebec. I've never been there, so I'm looking forward to it. The next day we should be back in Kingston, New Brunswick after another 8 hours of driving. We'll spend about 5 days there, then 5 days in Nova Scotia with my family, before we fly out on the 15th. We're looking forward to seeing everyone... and to spending some time in a home where we don't break into a sweat just from reaching for the remote control :)

Extreme Couponing: Taiwanese Style

Check out this coupon from Taiwan that I found when I was packing. It was mixed in with some old pictures and things.

It reads: "Spend over $100, get $20 duck blood free"

I appreciate saving on my duck blood as much as the next person, but do you think this coupon is still valid 3 years later? Better hold on to it, just in case.

Success!

THAT right there is a Chinese Z work visa. Despite all the background checks, they still decided to let a schmuck like me into their country. Imagine.

So glad it worked out in the end- we were stressing a few weeks ago! Our school had to fedex our original physical exams back to us (thankfully they still had them!) and we had to take them, and all our other paperwork, to the consulate in Ottawa to have everything processed. $168 later, and we're good to go for our trip to China in just...  19 days. Ahhhh!!! Better start packing.

How To Get a Teaching Job In China... and Then Bang Your Head Against a (Great) Wall Over Paperwork

Something I've never done before either of our teaching ventures abroad is discuss on here how we've gotten our jobs and how the work visa application process went. Something about going through this process for China has inspired me to write this all down, trust me, you'll soon realize why.

We got our jobs at the end of January. Mel and I went to a job fair (TORF) held at Queen's (where I was a student and she was- and still is for another few weeks- a teacher). We will both be working for the same international school: she's teaching Grade 6 ESL and I'm teaching Grade 1 as a homeroom teacher. From the get-go, finding a "real" teaching job as a certified teacher was totally different to what it was like as an uncertified BA graduate heading to Korea and Taiwan. First of all, you can teach anywhere. Every continent was represented at the job fair we went to. Second, the pay and benefits are significantly better. Makes sense- a qualified professional should be paid better and have more opportunities than an unqualified schmuck (AKA me, for most of my twenties).

We had a strategy: prior to attending the fair we researched hard core and pre-applied to schools that would be there and that we were interested in. For the research end of it, we joined internationalschoolreview.com and got access to hundreds of very informative reviews from teachers who had worked at schools all over the world. Some of those reviews crossed places right off our list (such as the school in South America where teachers had been kidnapped and blackouts were common) and some reviews bumped other schools to the top of the list as #1 choices for us. Some of these schools wrote back to us before the job fair and some didn't, but- hey- we were just trying to build a rapport, right?

On the first day of the job fair we registered and received our personal envelopes. In the envelopes were interview invitations from all the schools that had reviewed our resumes and were interested in us. Between the two of us, we had one interview invitation (from a school we'd pre-applied for). One invitation, and we both have over 3 years of teaching experience... we were disappointed. Especially when we could see other applicants strutting around fanning themselves with alllll their interview invitations and complaining that they would never be able able to attend that many interviews. But, the one invitation we got was from one of our top choices, so we just hoped for the best.

Next, there was an opening ceremony in my school's auditorium. After a little while they told us that the fair was ready and we were now allowed to go into the gym, where all the schools had booths set up. For a crowd of 300 job hungry teachers, this was the equivalent of being at a marathon and the ref has just shot off a pistol and exclaimed "GO!" Everyone, in their suits, fine dresses and high heels, raced to be the first to the gym. Mel and I went straight to a Turkish school we were interested in and were second in line. Not too bad! But then we started hearing a phrase that we heard over and over again that night "Sorry, not interested".

For one reason or another- they didn't want a couple, we didn't have the right background (looking for English grads rather than History), too many interviews already set up- no one was interested in us. It's disheartening to wait in line after line and to introduce yourself and pass over a resume, only to have it passed right back to you. For some reason, no one was interested in a pinky swear from me that I'm a really good teacher, PWOMISE, and no one at all cares about experience in Korea. It's too common. At the end of the three hours, besides the one pre-arranged interview, we had only managed to set up one interview- with a school in Qatar that was hiring "assistant teachers" at the primary level (a level which Mel wasn't interested in at all). By the end of the night, we felt pretty crap about our chances during the interview rounds the next day.

The next day started out with our pre-arranged interview, and it went well! It went really well- we liked him, he liked us, AND the positions were exactly what we were looking for (Grade 1 and ESL in China). After recommending us, and getting the go ahead from his bosses, we watched as he ERASED the names of people who had been tentatively hired for our positions and replaced them with our names. They were single teachers, you see, and with this school the preference is given to couples. We couldn't believe our luck, especially after the night before, so we canceled our Qatar interview and headed immediately to the pub to celebrate and dream of the future.

After getting hired, we embarked on the task of getting Z work visas for China. It's very tricky, and China is notoriously difficult and fickle with visa requests. First, we had to fill out some simple forms with our contact information, work history, etc. No biggie. We also had to compile reference letters, passport photos, diplomas, teaching certificates (which I hadn't gotten yet- kind of tricky- they accepted a promisary note from my university instead), resume, signed contract, and a physical examination record. This was by far the hardest part of the process, because the tests required are really extensive. We had to have a physical, a chest x-ray, dozens of obscure blood tests and an ECG! And we had to pay for all of it because it was for work and not requested by a doctor or anything. Though our school reimburses us later, it probably cost about $200 each, and it took weeks, and every doctor we met gave us a hard time for asking for these tests because they aren't commonly done for 30-year olds... they're usually done for the very sick. Anyway, we sent all of our paperwork to our school in China and waited for the next step.

In between all of this, we decided to bring our cat. Actually, we'd always planned to bring him with us if we moved abroad again because a) he's our responsibility, b) we love him. He's already 11 years old and we couldn't fathom leaving him for another 2 years. So, we started the lonnnng process of bringing him abroad. After a lot of research we decided to do all of the stuff on the Canadian-side of things by ourselves and hired an agent to handle the Chinese side of it all. We could have hired someone to do the whole thing but the cost was over $4000, which was slightly prohibitive. On our end of things, we've gotten him microchipped (a microchip not even used in Canada- it had to be special ordered for us- but it was the type China requires), got him some weird shots that no one ever gives their Canadian cat (again, because China said so) and bought all the things he needs to travel, like special food dishes and stuff. Our agent in Hong Kong (we're flying into Hong Kong and then traveling to our school in China because it's right on the border, which makes things even trickier because we had to adhere to the regulations of two countries) has filed all of Rufus's paperwork and now he's all ready to go, we just need to book his Air Canada Cargo flight, which can't be booked more than a month early. All in all, it's probably cost $2500 to send him over, but our school gives us nearly that amount to cover moving expenses so that's how we're paying for it and it's worth it to us.

So the cat is ready to go, but the last step for the people (that would be Mel and I) is to get z work visas. Two days ago, we received our last paperwork form China- all of the stuff we'd sent earlier was approved, so they sent us a formal invitation of employment. We just have to take it to the local consulate in Canada to get the z visas stamped into our passports. We're almost done, right? Wrong!

We're going to be in Toronto next Monday for a concert, so we thought we'd get our passports taken care of at the consulate there while we were in town. So, I called up today to make an appointment and to make sure I had everything I needed. Just before hanging up, the woman at the consulate advised me "Oh, and as of July 3 (AKA 7 days ago) the consulate in Canada now needs a physical examination record in addition to the formal invitation of employment". She laughed as she said this. It was hilarious. What?! We'd already had that done in April and sent it to China. If we hadn't, it would not have been possible for us to get the letter of invitation. Now they need to see another one? I asked if my school could just fax them a copy and, after checking with somebody, she told me that no, she needs an original. All of my paperwork from China is dated prior to the new July 3rd rule, AND I've already given their government this document and they still want another one. Oh, and when we get there we have to have another physical done anyway. Can you hear me banging my head against the wall? The great wall?

It would take weeks to have those tests done again. It would cost a lot of money. And we don't really have weeks to do this and then also get the visas approved- we leave in a month. Technically, we leave Kingston in less than 3 weeks and then we'll be too far from a consulate to get anything done. So, at the moment, we're kind of in limbo. I've just found all this out today so I've emailed our school for advice. Maybe they still have our original physical forms and they can send them to us? Maybe if I go through the Ottawa consulate I'll have better luck? Maybe we'll wind up back at the hospital ordering ECGs (most likely). Either way, this has been the longest process we've ever encountered in trying to work abroad. Despite all of this frustration, I know it will be worth it. I am beyond excited to start working. Can you imagine, being excited to do a job? I actually am. It's the exact grade I love teaching and the exact country I want to live in. We're going to have our cat with us, an apartment larger than a shoebox (I've heard 2 bedroom with a balcony!), and more vacation time than I've ever dreamed of. As well, I have the curriculum already and I've had the summer off so I've just been planning away for weeks now. I really feel like I'm so prepared for this and so ready.

 

Now, if we could just cut through this red tape so we could get into this red country, it seems like some really good things could start happening.




PS: Changed the name of the blog. I don't know, adding "China" to the list of "The Adventures of Melodie in Shawn in Korea, Taiwan and China" made for too much of a mouthful. What do you think of the new name? I'm not married to it... but it pretty much sums everything up, I think :)

August, 2012