I am learning through this experience the three P’s of teaching abroad – planning, paperwork and patience.
Planning - It takes a lot of planning before making a trip abroad for such a long time. You have to plan how to keep things running smoothly at home with your house,car, medical and financial affairs. Our home will be looked after by my daughter Angela, and our car we will put in the garage until we return. It is much easier to keep track of financial issues than it would have been before computers because you can access accounts quickly and easily on line. Then there are other minor issues like how much clothes to take which need to be addressed.
Paperwork - Of course there is a lot of paperwork to be processed. There are medical forms to fill out, contracts to read and sign, visa applications to make and flight reservations to book. Which brings me to the last point of this blog.
Patience – When you consider that we are all trying to make this work in different parts of the world, with different time zones, mainly through email, it really is amazing that it is coming together in three months since this all started back in June. So, even though at times there was a lot of waiting and I wasn’t always patient, it seems to be almost complete.
On Friday I received my work permit and visa authorization from the Chinese government. Now the next step is to bring those documents to the Chinese consulate in Toronto along with an application for an entry visa . Once approved we’ll be good to go!!
Yaaaa!! China here we come!
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