Wednesday, September 27, 2017

One Year Down...Don't Know How Many To Go

According to my "On This Day" section of Facebook, Red and I landed in China one year ago today.

September 27, 2016

The first few months were really rough, but we survived. And now that we've been here a year, I can mark Item #166 off my Bucket List. Live overseas for one year.

Click here to see the full list.

The year has flown by at an incredible pace. It seems like we just left the States.

There is still much that we are getting used to and miscommunications still happen daily, but we have gotten pretty comfortable with our lives here. We know how to do the things we need and want to do. Difficulties come less and less often and when they do occur, we can usually figure out what we need to do. Plus, we now have a bigger network of friends we can call for help if the need arises.

Many people have asked us when we will be coming back and we have a pretty simple answer for that.

We have no idea.

Here's what we do know. When we got here a year ago, we signed a three year lease on our apartment. That means...

Let's see...3 minus 1
...we have two years left on our lease. My wife just signed a two year contract with her employer and I'll be signing a new contract at the end of this year. So, we are committed to two more years. After that, who knows? We may decide to stay longer or we may not. However, we are fairly certain that even if we do leave China, we will not be coming back to the States. It will be time to try out another country for a while. We have a few we've been checking out, but haven't gotten very serious about it yet since it's still at least two years off.

In the meantime, we're just enjoying where we are now.

4 comments:

  1. ...and I JUST NOW get that Paul Blart joke. Wow.

    And also? We DID just leave the States. (LOL)

    You can do anything for 10 seconds...and then start another 10 seconds...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah! There are just really stretched out 10 seconds.

      Delete
  2. Wow, 3 year leases? Two year employer contracts? What kind of wonderful place is this? I remember how awful it was always having to re-sign an apartment lease every 6 months (with a rate raise, of course) before moving onto my new job because my yearly contract expired.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love that the rate for our apartment is locked in for three years, but that was a scary commitment of time when we had just arrived in the country.

      "I'm locked into this for three years? Honey, I don't know if I can sign."

      Delete

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