How Did We Get Here?

We're less than two weeks away from leaving home but it's taken, literally, a year to get to this point.  Throughout 2008 and 2009, we had been praying for an opportunity to visit Taiwan so that our kids can learn Chinese and that they can spend time with my parents who live there. However, going for a few weeks would not provide real language learning opportunities and having Tina stay there with the kids by herself did not seem viable. We are also 'cash poor' and did not think we had the finances for the trip.

Last August, God inspired us with this idea: Why not just stay longer and rent our house out? I work from home so, as long as my company would let me, I should be able to work from 'home' overseas. This would also allow our son to go to Chinese pre-school for a full academic year and, by renting our house out, we should be able to cover our plane ticket costs as well as the financial burden of paying our property taxes at the end of the year (that's another story altogether). After months of wrestling with the problem, the solution seemed all too simple.

After praying about this, we starting setting things in motion. My parents were extremely fond of the idea and started making plans on clearing out the spare rooms and office. My manager at work was also supportive and began contacting HR to figure out how to make this happen. This was a key point in that if neither my parents nor work was supportive of the idea then this idea was done. It took several months for my work to figure out exactly how to make this happen and the details involved.  To make a long story short, they decided to pay for my visa expenses as well as tax returns.  This was actually more than I hoped for as I thought the trip would be entirely self funded!

With the work situation settled (or so I thought) we began telling our friends and family. Most people had similar reactions: surprise when we told them we'd be going away for so long but supportive once we explained the details.  We purchased our tickets in May aboard Malaysian Airlines (not the cheapest but the cheapest non-stop flight)  and was blessed in that my sister would be on the flight with us! (We had another pleasant surprise two months later when we found out my cousin Andrew also arranged to fly back to Taiwan on the same flight. If miraculously having a 2:1 adult to child ratio on this flight is not proof of God's existence then I don't know what is.)

We then encountered a few setbacks at work.  Taiwan company HR only allowed new additions the first of every month. As my Taiwan work permit documents we set for a start date at the middle of the month, all these documents had to be re-done.  I also got a notice of termination from the US HR department. This turned out to be an error due to an incorrect employee ID number but it really got the blood pressure  going for a while. We also had some issues renting out our house but were able to find some good friends in the neighborhood willing to move into house and take care of things for nine months.

So the last few weeks have been about packing and getting ready.  We have a five page "To Do" list which we've been tackling and the garage is slowing filling up with stuff.  Looking back the preparations have really been smooth despite a few hiccups here and there.  We're both a bit stressed with the final 'push' that will get us out the door and on the plane but we're all still very excited and looking forward to the next step.

-- Steve