Medical Clearance - Completed!

Hi everyone:

We are finally medically clear!! It has been mere 312 days since we were nominated. Feels like a huge weight has been lifted. The weight of taking our whole medical histories and skills and life experiences and charting them out. Were we gather information for some sort of memoir, we'd be set. Maybe some other time.

We spoke with our placement officer Ms. H--- on Friday, and she was very helpful in telling us the next steps. We are good in her eyes to be invited to China soon, but China is one of the countries that requires pre-approval for invitation. That translates to Ms. H--- e-mailing our resumes to "post" (which we believe to be mainland China) to see if our skill sets qualify us in their eyes. Nick is a shoo-in because of his current job, but I am the wild card, as I have TA experience and some tutoring, as well as some language classes, but nothing on par with training in teaching or extensive experience. Should that fall through, we may be placed elsewhere in Asia with Nick still teaching English and me being a sanitation engineer (read 'build latrines and teach people about them') or we go to Africa where I can teach math, and Nick would do English or community development. I think in general we are still hopeful for China, as that has come to be our expectation.

The language and culture of China are to us at this point a labyrinth. We know very little, but want to learn much. One thing I am a little concerned about is the perception of Christianity there. I do wonder if there are some similarities between a post-modern Western world and a post-communist, spiritually starved Eastern World. We need to read up on this big time. Here is some introductory reading - Christianity in China on Wikipedia, The War for China's Soul in Time Magazine, Christianity is China's New Social Revolution in the London Telegraph.

Anyway, here goes:

We are medically cleared!!!