Hey, friends! It finally felt like the right time to dive into a new blog to document and share our preparations and eventual move to Suzhou, China.
As a few of you may have gathered, I'm not reeeeally allowed to call myself the "Perpetual Student's Wife" anymore, since my husband kicked serious butt and earned himself a job as an Assistant Professor of Music Composition in Suzhou, China's new School of Music at Soochow University. Just finished with his own Doctorate in Music, he's going to develop and build from nothing at all a composition studio at the collegiate level. I'm so proud!
We have less than a month longer in Houston and have been absolutely soaking in as many friend days as we can. While this city has been incredibly good to us, filled our bellies with a thousand delicious things and provided a pretty fascinating dose of year-round city-bound nature, we really loved being here because we made friendships that are sure to be life-long. It's a funny thing- Rice University, where Rob completed his doctorate, is a respected and strenuous academic institution filled with smarties in all fields. And the musicians we had the pleasure of getting to know are capable of playing at a professional level in their first year of a master's degree (they really are that darn good). But, they're nice as crap for as insanely talented as they are. A fair chunk of these students really want to go out of their way to play brand new contemporary music (plus scheduling rehearsals, plus showing up for performances) for the fun of trying something new and maybe a giftcard to the coffee house on campus. We'll miss that incredible sense of partnership and community, for sure.
Aaaanyway, we're up to our eyeballs in packing and preparations, here's a little glimpse of what it takes to get ready for an international move.
- Purge. Purge purge purge. We have decided to part ways with nearly 70% of our belongings. Long-ago clothing got sorted and donated, kitchen items got slashed in half, and crap you hang onto for no good reason gets triple checked and chucked.
- *BigFatSigh* We sold our Honda Fit. Which I miss terribly (but we are down to one car which will haul a trailer and have only one car insurance payment).
- List furniture online, host two garage sales, and donate the rest.
- Stock up on deodorant, toothpaste (green tea toothpaste is a convention I'm not quiiite willing to bend to), good walking shoes, and jeans.
- Prepack and carefully weigh our four duffel bags and pre-plan carry-ons to include heavy crap.
- Go to Doctors appointments, get check ups and beg them sweetly to fill out our Chinese-character-heavy health form for visa and work permit paperwork.
- Triple check and send scanned forms months ahead of time to our contacts at the university to get the ball rolling for visa paperwork.
- Get 20+ passport photos of each of us (and I'm not sure it will be enough) for, you guessed it, submission of paperwork upon arrival.
- Book two one-way plane tickets.
- Merge Delta Sky Miles accounts.
- Ebay purchase two SIM-card compatible and unlocked phones- all we need is to buy plans once we arrive.
- Receive exhorbitantly high quotes for both household goods and animal relocation.
- Oh, yeah, and keep working 45+ hours a week.
- Still need an international shipper in place who doesn't want to charge 5K to ship 12 medium boxes and a bicycle.
- Still need to find a family friend who wants to "own" a beagle for three months while we save up to bring our critters over.
- Still need our letter of invitation from the University in hand to submit visa paperwork.
- Still need to cancel insurance, give notice to our current phone company, repaint apartment walls and deep clean behind the stove, pick up and load the trailer of stuff to be taken back to Ohio, and do a 30 hour trip with BOTH animals in the car.
Needless to say, between my day job (only one more week, thaaank goodness!) and Rob's writing, teaching, and music input side jobs, it's been a pretty nonstop couple of months. And as much as I am really looking forward to the rest of June and getting good family time in with everyone in Ohio in July (plus, my sissy is getting married!!), I'll be thrilled to settle into a quiet routine in Suzhou. We'll have about a month between our arrival and classes starting, so Rob will dive in and be busy, I'm sure, but I'll spend the time hunting for coffee shops, trying my hand at strange vegetable purchasing in local markets, getting utilities, phones, and arrangements for an Ayi made (household help).
So, that's where it all stands. I hope you'll keep checking in with us as we continue to put pieces together and work out the kinks during our big, crazy move and transition! Don't forget to leave a comment with any of your tips for international moves.
