I haven't posted in a while now, which isn't that unusual for me, but I have a really good reason this time. This blog is supposed to be about my time living in China and I've been living back in the US for almost five months now. No, I haven't abandoned China. In fact, the reason that I returned was to get a proper work visa for China. Did I mention that my original visa was a tourist Visa? I probably left that off to keep friends and family from worrying. While it's very common to work in China without a proper visa, I always wanted to get the correct visa. Unfortunately, it's somewhat uncommon for a school to have the credentials necessary to legally hire foreign workers. The kindergarten that I'd been working at for the previous semester had all those credentials and wanted me to get the necessary paperwork. I was eager to get the visa right away, but it's really something that you have to be in the United States to get. So after my first semester working for him he agreed to send me back to the US to get the visa. That was April. I won't bother to bore you with the details of all the different elements, but it should suffice to say that it's complicated. Really complicated. And the ultimate goal is a temporary residence permit, which is basically a green card. With that you can work in China legally, stay indefinitely (as long as you maintain employment), and enter and leave the country at will.
