We're Moving to China

 Surprised?

I've been dropping hints for a while now--last fall's "Summer Vacation Changed My Life" and, more recently "Contentment and Faithfulness" contained some pretty significant clues.

But now's when the truth finally comes out. Angel and I are moving to ShenZhen, China, in late July, to get our TEFL certifications and begin work as ESL teachers. Our leave date is less than 3 months away at this point.

And sometimes I myself can't believe that statement.

The months since last August have been a whirlwind of applications, letters of recommendation, research, phone calls, emails, and learning quite a bit about the visa application process in a number of different countries.

At some points I was tempted to doubt that we would actually meet our goal of moving overseas by this summer. At other points I was tempted to doubt that moving overseas was really what we ought to do in the first place.

Now that we've bought the plane tickets, now that we've made the commitment--sometimes I feel like I'm bursting with joy at the thought of getting to work with children and language education and getting to study and really use a language I've invested so much of my life into learning. Other times, I feel somewhat overwhelmed at the reality of moving to a country with no one else I know except my husband, and having to cling desperately to my 8 semesters of college language classes in order to figure out in real life how to take a taxi and buy groceries at market.

I'm being honest here, moments come when I'm utterly terrified of what we're about to do, when I second guess myself and start to think about the comfortable suburban American lifestyle we could have had. But those are merely moments. I'm not in this for the moments, I'm in it for the long haul, and when I doubt myself for a second, I take time to remember why we wanted to go in the first place, and I get excited all over again. I don't want the suburban life, not really, even if it looks pretty fun while I'm standing right here.

So, that's the news, as far as we know right now. It's so hard to ever say the future, so I revert back to the flippant "Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise" statement, which sounds slightly irreverent, but it tells the truth. We hold the future lightly, but this is what we're dreaming of and working towards. We have some very, very busy weeks ahead of us as we tackle the to-do list that comes with moving to the other side of the world with a grand total of 2 suitcases, 2 carry-ons, and 2 backpacks to our name. (I've already found out that it's so much more complicated to move overseas as an adult than it is when your parents just bring you along!) I hope that you all will stick around to read the adventures of Angel and Rachel on the other side of the world.

I'm not really the blog series type, but clearly this is a bigger-than-everyday kind of life change, so I'm going to give once-weekly "Moving to China" themed posts and updates a go for most Fridays till we get there. Maybe. We'll see.