Passport to excitement.

Excitement is building.

In 24 hours, we will be either really close or just arriving at the airport for our flight to Shenzhen (SZ) China.  We (J and I) are excited to see the city, experience China, try local food, and meet up with friends from last year at BASIS BKK, and scout the city as it might be a job location for us.  Certainly China is in the running.  The pay and cost of living are great for us and with J transitioning to Leadership, it could really set us up on a career path of really really good paying jobs in places we would want to live and want Kiddo to experience.

Kiddo, for her part, is just excited to travel.  She’s got some wanderlust in her and I can relate to that.  She is, though, very excited for it.  She told her friends and teachers that she was going to China for break.  She and Nanny Beer made a passport for PorkChop Piggy (cuddle friend on the trip) so that everyone could get into China ok.  The one downside, according to Kiddo, is passport control.  She always hates standing on line and just the process of stand here, look there, look again, stand back 6 inches, move right 1 inch, hand here, scan your finger, scan your face, look here, go there…. Other than that, she is patient and good in airports.  She just plays, looks, asks, and chills.  She is great to travel with once through passport and security.  

For other excitements, J is getting traction on her resume.  She’s already got some schools interested.  3-4 interview requests.  She even had a school reach out and ask her to apply.  The thing is, the “hiring process” doesn’t officially start until the weekend after we get back from SZ, so the fact that J is on the front end of that and getting requests bodes well for us and her.  Plus, she’s got a number of people here and that she’s connected with since coming here that have offered to put in a word to head of schools that they know and that will mean a lot as well.

As for me, I’m just excited to travel and see some new stuff.  The bummer is that we will be in SZ China on a single entry visa and since that is cost prohibitive for American Passport holders, we will have to skip seeing Hong Kong this trip, but we are also about 90% sure that we will be staying in the region, so we can always do a weekend in HK if we wanted to next school year or the one following.  The long and short of it is that we are trying out very best to fill the pages of our passports.

We are just having a day, outside of the packing.  We’re going to go out and have a simple dinner tonight.  Just to avoid leftovers and food waste.  Also, though, it will be a nice time to take Kiddo out and just have a chill night.  The place we’re going in local to us.  We could walk if needed, it’s 1.7km, but we can cab it and it’s 10 minutes tops.  We are more just packing and hanging out today.  The next few days are going to be exploring and busy.  

More to come from SZ or after, depending on the day and how much time we have while in China.  I hope I can post at least once.  I would like to “test” how easy the website is to use in China.  When I say we want to scout the area, that’s the type of stuff I’m talking about as well.  Could we live there?  Local food?  Food options outside of local?  Internet is restricted (It’s China) and no google, so how do we manage and navigate?  Meds and can I (like I did in Vietnam) communicate and get a rough cost on meds?  Groceries?  Life and cabs and housing and blah blah blah.  Basically, all of it.  We know we all LOVE HCMC and would go live in Vietnam in a heartbeat, but what about other places.  Next year and year after, we will do the same.  Get to Korea, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, etc and see if we want to live or just visit.  Also, with the pay in some of the cities and cost of living, we could summer in Europe, so that’s a reason to do China for 2 years; good enough pay to allow us to see Europe for 2 months in the summer.

So, cheers for now and see you again for my next post.

Let’s go, Kiddo… we gotta pack and then tomorrow we get to explore again.  We can’t wait to explore and experience with you and take it all in.  Don’t worry about the airport, Mumma and I will be with you and we’re just gonna do the standing and waiting and then we all get to do family exploring and fun.  We love you, Kiddo and we’re so glad to explore and see all these cool places with you.