Dear friends, what a season this has been. It has been a challenge to stay focused in faith and not lose heart, but we press on.

We have received various bits of news of the school we have been trying to get to. Way back in early December we received an email from the Dept Director bemoaning the hassle of getting the one last Invitation Letter, along with this thoughts that they school might just give up. We gave that a few days thought, consulted with another worker, and responded with essentially a deadline: Either the Invitation Letter comes soon or we look elsewhere. That got the Dept Director energetically writing to ask us not to…. but not a word from the Foreign Official.

In the meantime we have heard that a number of other expats at the school on student visas were all told they had to leave by January 4th. OK, so the gov is clearing the school of foreigners. This has happened before and we are glad we aren’t there to get caught up in that clearing. Then recently we heard the other English teacher, an American, was still there. His description of what he has been doing was very enlightening. It turns out that right in Sept the school asked him to take the classes I was going to take. So he said yes; he is young and inexperienced in China teaching, and did not realize what was happening. Basically, once he said yes, with good intentions and just trying to help the students, and was teaching ALL the classes, it gave the school little reason to hire another one. One for the price of two! We don’t hold any grudges, and it is good to see what sort of administration we could have been working under.

All this to say is we are looking into other options and will post an update soon. We hope your Christmas was a good time, and that the New Year preparations are going well too!