Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Movin right along ...

It hasn't even been one whole week since we have made the decision to move to Hong Kong and we have started to get a lot of stuff moving. We are getting some house stuff in order today and in doing so, I had to go to the bank and get stuff out of the safety deposit box. Gosh ... that thing is a mess. I did manage to find our birth certificates, a savings bond that someone gave Gabby when she was born and a ton of house stuff (all stuff I did not need!) So, that was a "worth it" trip.



We have forms that we need to fill out for the work visa. Holy moly, that thing is complicated. What is interesting the government (HK) is asking for a copy of Jonathan's transcripts. They
want to know your education level ... I guess they don't want a dumb foreinger working there :)



So now we have moved onto finding a homeschooling program. We have looked at A Beka and Calvert school. Jonathan is leaning twards A Beka, but I looked at the math program for 5th grade and Hannah is doing some of that now in 4th. I hope that it challenges her. I would hate to put her behind when we get back. What I think I might do is buy a used book on ebay and see if it will be a good fit for her.

When do we start telling people that we are moving?

We knew that we had to tell family first. I did not want them to hear over facebook, so I called my parents and Jonathan emailed the Collins side too. I then called my cousin, who is getting married Labor Day weekend and broke the bad news that we were probably not going to make it to her wedding in Chicago or Argentina (I know ... cool huh!). She was excited about he HK part (she is also a world traveler) but sad about the wedding. (So were the girls and I!) Then it was time to move on to some of my close friends from high school whom I reconnected with recently. Now ... I have started to tell some of my closest friends here in person, I'm sure the rest will find out thru word of mouth by the end of next week.

Jonathan took it upon himself to put it out on his beginnertriathlete blog and tell some friends from swimming. I wasn't really prepared for it, but it was like ripping off the band aid ... fast and clean. We have gotten a huge amount of support. I really appreciate ALL of it!

This next week we need to narrow down a couple of areas we think we want to live. Jonathan wants to live in Discovery Bay, where we will get a little more room for the money. I'm not really sure where I want to live, because it is a balancing act between getting the full experience and having a good quality of life for the girls like parts and rec areas.

Monday, March 22, 2010

9 weeks the stars align

Where to begin ...

About a year ago friends of our in the neighborhood told us that they were going to move from Alpharetta, GA to Denver, CO to start a new church. Wow ... what a crazy idea. The idea itself was not crazy, but the logistics of going to a brand new place to start a new church and everything that goes with it sounded very daunting. But, they both had such a peace about it, that it got me thinking ... Is it time to go abroad again?

We knew that we wanted to do another international rotation. (The first one will be another entry for another day) Jonathan explored some options and they were New Zealand, Switzerland and Hong Kong. Both New Zealand and Switzerland were not good fits for Jonathan's job skills, so that left Hong Kong. Jonathan talked with some of the partners and expats that were already there and got a bit excited about it. But then there was a huge lag in communications with the people who were heading up the international rotations. One of the biggest blunders that they could do was just leave people hanging ... which they did ... a lot.

In January we got word again that they were VERY interested in Jonathan coming out to start in March. Now, to catch up ... we started in August, talked with people in September, touched base in early November and did not hear anything until the second week of January. Crazy! We let them know that we were interested still, but needed to know a couple of things .. most important, "Do you plan on paying us? and Will it be enough to live on?" Important questions!

A bit more waiting took place until the first week of March when they emailed Jonathan and made us an offer to come. They finally talked about money and how their expat stuff was going to work for us.

We talked and talked and talked some more about the things we needed in life to live, what experiences we wanted to have as a family and if this was the right thing for all of us to do right now. I talked with the girls in the car on day on the way to run errands and explained to them that they made an offer to our family to go and see what they wanted to do. One of the major adjustments that we were going to make was the I was going to home school the girls. I know ... wipe the shocked look off your face and keep reading. For us, getting the girls into an international school was going to be tough. There was not a guarantee that the girls would get into the school and then where would we live? Once we made this decision (I will discuss more later on this), everything else fell into place. We now are open to living anywhere on the islands and also have more freedom to take some vacations when we want to.

Do you know when things align and there is no rhyme or reason to it? I feel like this happened with us and this decision. They are little things, but they started to add up in my head and kept me thinking about things. It seems that the AAA magazine this past month talked about adventuring to Hong Kong; Gabby and I caught some international home finder show about Hong Kong; along with a few other things. I know they are small, but I just felt that it was something nudging us to do this. The craziest thing about this, Jonathan was our hold out.

I think that brings us up to date with this. We are now 9 weeks out and have already made lists upon lists of things to do. The girls are going to finish this school year and we are going to give them around 5 days to say good bye to all their friends and most of all Grandma and Grandpa. So, right now May 28th is the last day in the US. What is really crazy is it is 1 month shy of 10 years since we started our last international rotation. Here we go!