Every fun and witty title for this blog post felt horribly racist so I went with the very lame one above. Sorry!

I think everyone knows this now, but Chad and I are moving to China for a year! Well 11 months... I actually most likely will not spend a single birthday in China... isn't that weird? Anyway, we decided to chase down an adventure for Chad's year between undergrad and law school because what else is he going to do for a year and because I've always done the boring responsible thing  we thought it was about time.

It all worked out so seamlessly!
We went from talking about it, to applying, to getting a placement in about a month's time. It really feels like it was meant to be- that we are suppose to be in China this next year. 

 We are going with the organization China Horizons and they are placing us in Weifang at a University. It is called Shandong Vocational College of Economics and Business

As you can see it's about half way between Beijing and Shanghai and just across the bay from Korea.

According to Wikipedia "Weifang has a monsoon-influenced, four-season climate, on the very borderline between humid continental and humid subtropical (Köppen Dwa/Cwa, respectively), with hot, humid summers, and cold but dry winters. Monthly daily average temperatures range from −2.9 °C (26.8 °F) in January to 26.2 °C (79.2 °F) in July, and the annual mean is 12.5 °C (54.5 °F). More than 70% of the annual precipitation occurs from June to September, and sunshine is generally abundant year-round."

So basically just like New York... at least weather wise!

We are currently scheduled to arrive in China on August 22nd and not leave till mid July. The contract is Sept 1st till July 15th, but obviously we gotta get there before that and we'll probably tour around after that. We want to try and visit Japan, Thailand, Cambodia and who knows where else while we are over there, because why the heck not. We joked about going to North Korea, but decided with the US passports we have 15 years hard labor MIGHT not be worth it.

So what will our time looks like? Well the contract states that teaching time in a week should be 14-18 hours and if they ask for more hours they'll pay us more for it. It also states that we should be "serious in lesson preparation, class-giving, homework checking and English-coaching after class" and that we are expected to take an active part in the English Corner activities. Whatever that is! It's a 5 day work week so we should be busy, but not insanely busy which sounds perfect when you're living in a foreign country you want to explore!

So of the perks of the job are that they are providing a "western style" furnished apartment for free, a bus pass with RMB 100 on it  (not quite sure how much it's going to really cost us to ride said bus), we get paid, we'll get a winter break travel allotment and at the end of the teaching contract they will refund the round trip ticket we paid for to get to and from China. So we won't be rolling in the money and could definitely make more money if we stayed in the US (but expenses would be higher- China we only need to feed ourselves really) but we are looking forward to an adventure and I really think this is the perfect way to spend the year off. Also, it's about time for a career reset for me, so this is the perfect way to do it!

So everyone, save you money and come visit us in China... much cooler than NYC if you ask me!