Paper trails and tribulations

It's been a ridiculously long time since I wrote anything. Time for an update. However the problem is that my brain is not working that well. 

Well, the nay sayers are still around, but that is to be expected. Pessimists will always exist. Something I have discovered is that no matter how long you are staying as soon as people know you are on your way out the vast majority consider you already gone. It is a very odd situation to be in. There is the excitement over who is going to have your desk and what awesome things they can do when you leave! My only defense is to continually remind myself and others how awesome my new life is going to be. This works, to a degree.

My Mum has helped with one issue I thought my smartphone would eradicate for me. Not speaking a word of Mandarin has been a slight concern. Everyone who knows we are moving to China asks "Do you speak Chinese?" and then goes into shock when we state that we can't. Well, we now have the solution The Wordless Travel Book. I love languages, but my new book from my Mum will make life easier. At least I know I can ask for new cutlery, the emergency services, a hotel room, underwear...

There is an enormous paper trail to play with before getting to your new destination. I did panic when someone else I met at the fair had completed all of their paperwork with the school within a fortnight and I still hadn't heard anything! It would have been a lot easier to have done the paper work during the school holidays rather than term time. It seems a very long process and it is not ideal trying to fill out visa forms, confirm flights, shipping, try desperately to get someone to talk to you about accommodation, continue with your job, sell all your worldly goods, sell your house, sort out shipping your fur baby.....oh and have a life. Actually I lie. There is no time to have a life.

My husband is amazing. He is helping in every possible way. He has taken on more cooking, housework, dog walking etc. Most of all he has been wonderfully understanding and amazingly supportive. He has also added some humour to some of our situations such as the garage sale where people didn't wish to pay even $1 for anything. Possibly the best was when we had a saw with guide, still in the packaging and they didn't want to $1 for it. People have no clue!

Due to some of the restrictions on what can be shipped into China we have made huge decisions on what we are taking and culling. We added up our CD's and it turns out that we had over 750 between us and an equally silly amount of DVD's. The wonder of Apple has helped us to get over the culling process somewhat and Real Groovy in Auckland took most of our collection off our hands.

It turns out you cannot take in an excessive amount of books and I had a very worrying moment when it was suggested that sheet music would be classified as books. This would have been disastrous for me. Thankfully we have been given the contact details for a fantastic shipping person who has answered all our queries about wetsuits, sheet music and other bizarre shipping restrictions. No diving equipment, tax on all electronic items (it appears there are exceptions), no duplicates of electronic items and this is just a small portion of the list of things to consider when preparing to ship your belongings to China.

The paper trail was all going fine until I found out I have to complete an online test. I think the last time I sat a test was to prove I had adequate literacy and numeracy skills to teach. Immediately my overachieving self started worrying about failure. I checked and yes it is possible to fail, but that's ok. In what world is failing ok?! I am avoiding the test. I hear rumours of a section on Chinese general knowledge and your personal beliefs. Hopefully nothing too probing. Intimidating all the same as it is for the Chinese Government.

It is now under 4 months until we fly out. The house was on the market for about 5 days before getting a sale. My visa paperwork is complete. I still have no clue where we will live as I think the housing agent I am meant to be dealing with has forgotten how to turn their computer on. I have the ability to log into the school domain and look at planning - I still have a term and a bit at my current school so the likelihood of me checking out the planning for August is fairly unlikely right now. Reality is starting to kick in. There are bouts of excitement, optimism, intrepidation, fear, stress....