Well, many of you already know, but for those of you who don't, we are moving to China! Dave has accepted a 3 year assignment in Shanghai, and we couldn't be more excited! Not many families who have adopted internationally ever get the chance to live in their child's birth country, so we feel very blessed to have this opportunity.Dave and I recently traveled to Shanghai to go house hunting and to visit the two American international schools. Shanghai is a beautiful city, but this will be quite a change for our family. With a population of 18 million, it will be similar to living in downtown New York!
As if moving overseas isn't exciting enough, we will have the great fortune of sharing it with our dear friends, the Steeds! They have been great friends of ours for several years (Dave and John began working for Deere at the same time, and Cristi and I co-founded Raising Hope International together), and John was also asked to be a part of this China Team for Deere. We are going to be living in the same neighborhood and our houses are two streets apart. How's that for Divine Intervention?
Due to the Olympics, we don't have a definite moving date yet. China has stopped processing Z-visas (which is what we need to enter the country as ex-pats) until after the Olympics and Special Olympics are over. So, we hope to move the first week of October, but it all depends on when our Z-visa is issued. We have a house waiting for us, and the boys were accepted into Concordia International School (our first choice), so we are ready to go! We have decided to keep our house in Moline, so it is making our move a little easier. We will be coming back here after our assignment in China, and since our house has been in the O'Keeffe family for 40 years, we just couldn't imagine living anywhere else. This house is truly home for us.
We'll keep all of you posted as more details arise.
Start working on your passports...we expect to get visitors!
