The Joys of Paperwork

Remember all those steps we listed in our Hurry Up and Wait post? The six steps that need to happen so we can get to China?

We're still on the first one... well actually, we regressed.

Last Wednesday, we got an email from our school saying that as they were handing over our paperwork to the government, they were informed that Daniel and I need to get physicals before the government will accept our résumés. Not only that, but the physicals need to be done by a doctor/hospital that has been approved by the Chinese consulate in Chicago. Our boss emailed the Chinese consulate for names of the acceptable doctors/hospitals in Indiana as soon as she found out, but Daniel and I figured that they wouldn't respond for a while. We tried calling their office, but we couldn't get through to anybody. So we called another branch of the consulate, and talked to a receptionist who gave us his very unofficial, but still welcomed conjecture: try a big-name hospital.

Without further ado, Daniel and I took off to the hospital here in town. They were willing to give us a physical that very day; we were afraid that we would have to set up an appointment for a later date since we had to get a chest X-ray, an EKG, and blood work done, but they were happy to help us. The people at the hospital were so kind and willing to work with us, including the nurse whom we had to beg to notarize the form.

A little background information: We thought we had to have the form notarized because we had to send it off to get an apostille from the Indiana secretary of state. We had to get an apostille because we had to send it off to the consulate in Chicago to get a "great seal," which approves it for use in China. Without those, the government cannot accept the physical... or so we thought.

When we got the paperwork back from the hospital the next day, we had it notarized, then scanned everything into our computer and sent the digital copies to our school just on the off chance that the local government would accept the paperwork without the great seal from the consulate. We went ahead and sent the hard copies to the Indiana secretary of state to get the apostille. Of course we paid the big bucks for express mail, because we were worried about the timing of everything. We were counting on the secretary of state taking a week to get the apostille back to us, and then about two weeks at the consulate. Then we would have had to send everything to China so that we could finally get our physicals and résumés approved. Then who knows how long it would be before we got our Letters of Invitation (LOIs). There was a very real possibility that we wouldn't be able to arrive in China until after the school year started.

But the good news is that God answers prayers. On Friday, two days after we first found out about all this mess, we got an email from the school again saying that the local government accepted our un-consulate-approved physicals! So now they are going through all of our paperwork, step one of the process.



It looks like we're all set to get our LOIs, but we were informed this morning that we will need a background check before arriving in China. When our school first took the paperwork to the local government, they told us there was no need for a background check. I guess things have changed within the past four or five days, and now we do need them. We already have extended criminal background checks for the school we worked for here in Indiana, and we sent a copy of those to the school. Our hope is that the local government will accept those without the great seal from the consulate; if they need the great seal, then we will need to get fingerprinted again so that the Indiana state police can notarize it, so that we can get the apostille, so that we can get the great seal... so on and so forth.

  

Some Insight into Chinese Culture

Rather than writing numerous posts, I've decided to include some videos made by Off the Great Wall to help you get a better understanding of Chinese culture. After all, if pictures are worth a thousand words, then videos are at least worth a million, right? 

(If you have subscribed to receive our updates via email, you may have to come to our website to view the embedded clips.)

The video below is about paying the bill when you go to a restaurant with your Chinese friends. Daniel and I laughed so hard while watching this, simply because some of these tactics have been used against us! 

And yes, that last scene happens at every restaurant we go to. Just kidding, but we really did take some pointers on how to best use stuffed animals while fighting over the bill. 

Ever wonder what you should give to a Chinese friend? Off the Great Wall explains the gifts that you should never give to a Chinese person. Thankfully they do include gifts that are readily accepted, though I fear we may be in trouble when it comes to affording all those. 

This last one isn't so much about culture as it is about the awesomeness of chopsticks. They are more useful than what they're given credit for... especially giant chopsticks.

Well, hope you've enjoyed learning a bit more about the culture that we love! Not everything that happens in China results in Kung Fu (功夫gōngfu), but almost.

Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret

While counting down the weeks until our departure, we have been spending what free time we have this summer on studying Chinese and reading more about Chinese history. Sure we have been doing other things, such as helping friends out, visiting family, and hiding under the stairs of our apartment on our three-year anniversary— turns out it was just a dinky little tornado that may or may not have actually touched down south of here— but we want to prepare as much as possible for our transition back to the Middle Kingdom.  We have also resolved to update the blog once a week. Because not much else has developed for the Hurry Up & Wait Game, we plan to inundate you with recommendations for various books, articles, audiobooks, songs, and lectures that we love. While most of them will have to do with China, we make no guarantees!

For our first installment of "Daniel and Marta's Highly Sought-After List of Excellent Reads and Listens" ... no, that doesn't sound quite right, but I like it anyway... we will be talking about Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret by Dr. & Mrs. Howard Taylor. We have both read it and really appreciate it, not because it's a fantastic piece of literature, but because it talks about a truly inspiring man. Hudson Taylor was one of the first prominent missionaries to China (Note: there are no missionaries in China now! Perhaps we'll write a post on that sometime soon), from about 1853 to 1905. He dressed like the Chinese and cut his hair in the style that was fashionable back then. 

Hudson Taylor

Cool, huh? Not only that, but he pressed on into China's unreached interior and touched many lives through his knowledge of medicine and his heart for the Divine. Nationals wanted to hear what he had to say because he was a foreigner who obviously cared about the Chinese people enough that he was willing to look like them, as much as his European profile would allow. This is encouraging to us, that even though Chinese people nowadays dress much like Westerners, we can still appear like them in our attitudes, with a willingness to use the language and to learn about their country's history.

This book is a quick read, and we suggest it for everyone, even if you know you'll never live in China. His spiritual insights can apply to anyone. And don't worry, you do find out what his "secret" is, so it's not quite a secret anymore! 

Goodbye? See you again?

Chinese happens to be one of the coolest languages, and there are many reasons for that. Take saying goodbye, for instance. In English, we generally have "Goodbye," and sometimes "Farewell." Both seem to have a sense of "who knows if I'll ever see you again" behind them. I suppose at times we do say, "See you soon," but that tends to have a casual ring to it. 

Chinese, on the other hand, has many ways to say goodbye, such as 一会儿见 (yīhuìr jiàn, see you in a while)，马上见 (mǎshàng jiàn, see you super-soon)，明天见 ( míngtiān jiàn, see you tomorrow)，星期一见 (xīngqīyī jiàn, see you Monday). Notice how they all include a specific time word? These are not informal, either, in comparison to the, "See ya later, alligator," that we occasionally offer up to dear friends and small children. 

And for the times that you are unsure of when you will see the other person next, you can use 再见 (zàijiàn). The word that has appeared in all of these phrases is 见 (jiàn), which basically means "to meet." 再 (zài) means "again" with a future aspect to it. So "See you again" would be an adequate translation, and they say it all the time as a formal salutation. There's no hesitation, either; it's not "Maybe we'll run into each other again some day." It's a definite "I'll see you again." 

The traditional characters for 再见

Daniel (see his thoughts here) and I said our goodbyes today to our coworkers here in the States. Too bad that we couldn't say to them what we really wanted to: 再见. Who knows when we will see each other next, but nonetheless, 再见.