Big News

Journaling has always been a hobby of mine, so I've decided to begin a blog to record the all of the events and emotions involved with the coming adventure for our family.

So to begin at the start of 2013...

Over winter break, Donnie and I had a day to explore all of our options for the future. We decided to try for international teaching positions because it had always been a dream of ours to teach overseas, and to get back to living a little bit more simple. So we went through the time consuming process of applying to a recruiting service, bought plane tickets to San Francisco for a job fair, and hoped for the best.

Once our applications were active, we began to email schools that interested us. At first, we focused on schools in areas where we wanted to be, with positions open that matched us. After little success, we opened our minds (actually mine was already open), and began an intensive search of all international schools that had positions to match us.

In the month that we attempted this, we mostly got automated responses to our emails, and a few no thank yous, and even fewer interested schools. A school in Lithuania caught my eye, and they ended up interviewing us mid-January. It went well, and they asked to meet us in San Francisco. In the mean time, an organization of schools called QSI expressed a great deal of interest in us.

We spoke on the phone with one of their consultants, Mr. Philpot, and he said that we were very appealing candidates. He checked our references, and sent us a preliminary salary quote. It seemed pretty promising, so we wrote back and asked which positions we would be likely to get. Turned out most of them would be in Kazakstan, so we told him we were not interested. He emailed us again with the possibility of jobs in Shenzen, which is outside of Hong Kong. This caught our attention, and so we arranged to meet Mr. Philpot in Atlanta the next weekend.

All went well in the meeting in Atlanta, in fact it seemed meant to be. Mr. Philpot was a superintendent for DODDS in Europe while we were there, and we knew a lot of the same people. He even sent his kids to NAU because he knew it was a good school from the student teachers he had worked with from there. We left with a signed document stating that we had accepted positions in their school in Shekou, and we were elated!

Celebrating in Atlanta: Dinner and The xx concert

It felt surreal. We were really doing this. We had put our minds to it, and it had happened. It was as close to a dream come true as you could get. I will never doubt the power of hard work, focus and determination, you can reach whatever goal you set in front of yourself.

Now it has been a week since Atlanta, we have sent off our signed contract for 2013-2014 in Shekou, and have received the overwhelming information about how to get visas to work in China. It will be a process, and I am anxious to get started! Starting with authenticating documents through the US and Chinese consulate.

The joy of the adventure on the horizon far outweighs the stress of the mountain to climb to get there, so we will take this in stride and begin the process slowly. Mostly by waiting for my renewed passport to return to us by mail. :) The next steps include getting recommendation letters, clearance from the police department, and of course authentication.

I will keep this as updated as possible with events and happenings in our journey to China!