Preparations...

The past few weeks has been an adventure in and of itself, starting with trying to obtain our visas for entering China. The process of getting a visa is a nightmare of bureaucracy and paperwork. I'll spare the details but it took us four visits to the Chinese Consulate (on two separate trips to Houston) to finally get our visas in hand...and we still haven't even gotten work visas or residency permits. I will be able to apply for that after I complete a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course in Beijing. Then we will head to Hong Kong to apply for the aforementioned visas and permits. In the mean time, Chelsea is on a tourist visa and I am on a business visa, both of which are only valid for 60 days after entering the country. 

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the past few weeks. We were very excited to have gotten our visas but still had a lot to do. Who knew there was so much that has to go into leaving the country? We spent pretty much all of last week on the phone with various entities in order to tie up all of our loose ends here in the states....banks, former employers, cable/internet provider, phone provider, electric company, gas company...the list goes on and on. We scheduled cancellations for all our providers and made arrangements for final payments and any possible refunds.

Once all that was taken care of, we started the process of actually packing up everything we will be taking with us. We had already started clearing out our house, storing anything we want to keep and throwing out/giving away anything we don't. But as far as packing everything we were taking with us, we still had a lot to do. By a lot, I mean everything. Our flight includes two checked bags and one carry on each, so we used plastic space saver bags (graciously donated by Chelsea's coworkers) and proceeded to cram our entire lives into four suitcases, leaving only about a week worth of clothes each that will go into our carry-on bags. That is what we will be living out of until we reach our final destination in Kunshan.

That brings us to today. The last few weeks have been crazy busy but we've gotten a ton accomplished. We have about a week left in Austin before we leave to spend our last few days in the US with our families. August 2nd is our last day in the country. In the meantime, we will continue to tie up loose ends here and say goodbye to friends.

Till next time,

Hunter