Hurry Up and Wait

Want to know a helpful tip about life in China? Here you go: nothing happens until it happens. Living in China requires flexibility and patience- two traits that do not come naturally to many Americans. So be prepared for things to happen slower and differently than you would like, then grin and bear it. Daniel and I love to hurry up and wait, so this is a bit of challenge for us, but we hope to grow from it and grow to love it. 

Before we return, another way that we can practice our patience is by waiting for all the paperwork to get processed. Here are just some of the steps that we need to take before we can fly on our merry little ways: 

1. Our school has to get our résumés approved by the government.
2. The school has to mail us a Letter of Invitation, saying they want us to work at that school. 
3. We have to take the letter of invitation to the Chinese consulate so that we can get our visas. 
4. We also may have to get fingerprinted by the FBI, but I'm not sure where that fits in the timeline; I've just heard it is a 2 month process in and of itself.
5. Sometime after we get those valuable work visas, we can then get our plane tickets. 
6. (Head off to China, register with the government, and get our year-long work visas.)

So although we would love to hurry up and get all this paperwork done so that we just have to wait, I'm afraid that it's going to be the other way around: wait around for a month or two, and then hurry up and get all the paperwork done within the last few weeks. Oh well. As the Chinese say, "C'est la vie!" (Wait... that's French...)

The "Waiting Room" at the train station in our city.