China-bound

Sooo... Lance and I are moving to China! We'll be teaching English for a year -- not sure in what city yet, still working on those details -- through a program called China Horizons. (Click here to learn more) We will teach at a school (possibly a university) and be given an apartment on campus rent free to stay in while we are there. Since we are college grads we'll be paid (opposed to being just a volunteer) and the school will reimburse our flights -- which is sweet, because we dropped $2,000 on those tickets.
We don't need to know Chinese/Mandarin to teach because most of the students have been studying English throughout most of their schooling and will be able to communicate with us. We'll be there to help them with conversation skills, to teach about the American culture and things that don't translate very well in English language books taught by Chinese teachers (expressions like "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse").
We leave mid-August and it's on my mind most of the day. I'm always thinking about what it'll be like, what I should pack, what won't be there that I take for granted here, the crazy places we'll see. Our main form of communication with you (America) will be through the Internet, so we plan to email and blog often as well as use Skype calling with family. We can get cell phones over there for cheap, but not sure yet if we will or not and that would generally be for emergencies or calling other teachers in the program.
So I'm excited, but kind of nervous too, when I think about the everyday things I take for granted. Like living in America? ha that pretty much sums it up. Clean water. Nice apartment. Free government. Close to family. Freedom of speech and religion. A car and cellphone. haha but it'll be good for us, especially me. I feel like I've had a lot of learning experiences thus far in life, but I think it'd be good for me to leave my comfort zone and experience the world. I think traveling is a great way to learn about other cultures and people, but actually living somewhere does that and will teach me a lot about myself, I'm sure. And about compassion. Before we were married we planned on doing something like this, and this past year everything fell into place as we researched programs and planned it. We think it'll good life experience before life starts -- grad school, careers, babies.. and it's something we'll probably never have the opportunity to do again.
So China.. here we come.