Dear Family and Friends, We hope this finds you well and that you are staying warm in whatever part of the world you may currently find yourself. We are presently waiting on pins and needles (ha!) to see if we will be met with the 12-18” of snow predicted to come our way beginning tomorrow. It has been several months since our last update and in many ways, it seems that our life has changed rapidly and yet again (in the day to day monotony of infant feedings, changing, etc.,) not at all. We figured it was time to send out an update from our corner of the world! Getting Up to Date I believe our last update came to you from Syracuse, New York as we were venturing up north for a few months in Maine. We enjoyed a lovely 3 month stay in the Northeast, while awaiting paperwork and adoption proceedings. (The most asked question we received this fall was, “Why Maine?” Maine was one of the states charged with finalizing our adoption and we needed to be in state for home visits with attorneys, etc. Our case was originally transferred there to help us expedite and navigate the difficulties of returning to China. Once we realized it would be too difficult to return, enough time had progressed to make changing this part of the process unavoidable. We enjoyed a lovely stay up north, and explored Boston, Portsmouth NH (we almost landed here for a little while!), the Seacoast, and Woodstock, Vermont where we had a small weekend getaway. We enjoyed visits by both sets of our parents, along with some dear friends, and were grateful to take in all of the fall festivals, pumpkin patches, and autumn harvests that we have missed out on while being abroad. It was a lovely beginning season for us as a new family of 3! .We left Maine (narrowly avoiding a snowstorm) the week before Christmas and took a 4 day trek from the Northeast to central Florida to stay with my parents for a while. We enjoyed soaking in the warmer temperatures, long walks in the sunshine, and time with family. Several of my cousins visited over New Year’s, which was a wonderful chance to reconnect. Our timeline in Florida lengthened as Jess was invited for several in person interviews for Principal/Head of School positions. Over the past few months, we had been entertaining several possibilities about our next steps and January became the month where everything began to really formulate and come together. Where to Next? When we first returned home to the US, we were often asked whether we were seeking job opportunities in the states or if we were hoping to go abroad again. We never truly had an answer to this question, as our options were never location based. We saw benefits to both choices, and for us, our primary focus was always on finding a school that would be the best fit for who we are, not only as individuals, but as a family. This led to a somewhat exhausting job search as we were willing to land just about anywhere if the school was right. In the past few months, we’ve interviewed with schools in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Austria, Colombia, New York City, and Germany, just to name a few. While other opportunities presented themselves, nothing ever felt right until Jessie’s most recent string of interviews. In mid-January, she spent almost a week on an extended interview and school visit in Augsburg, Germany, and we are excited to share that we will be moving there in late March/early April! She will be taking on a School Director of Education role (for those unfamiliar with the education sphere, this is a very well deserved promotion for her from her previous role of Upper School Principal) at the International School of Augsburg. We are happy to be landing back in an IB school that is so focused on families and community building and the idea of being in Europe was an unexpected twist for us that we’re looking forward to! Kaia We, of course, can’t send an update without sharing about Kaia. She is such a feisty, strong, and happy baby and having the opportunity to have so much time together as a family in her early months is a privilege that is not lost on us. We feel very fortunate to have experienced so many of her milestones together. To prepare her for the adventures ahead, she’s found her feet planted in 21 states in the past 4 months. She’s become an expert travel baby, and is enjoying (finally) having her own little nursery in St. Louis for a while after jumping from one airbnb to the next in her little life. Myko and Tiger I’m not sure when I turned into the kind of person who gives updates on our animals, but since Myko and Tiger have lived through a variety of adventures the past 5 months too (and because we still get so many questions about them), I figured they deserved their own little section. We were happy to finally be reunited with Myko this weekend after what has been a bit of a bumpy road for him. After flying with us from China, being moved to no less than 5 airbnb’s, and living with a crazy cat lady while we were in the Northeast, he finally spent the better part of the last two months with family friends of ours in St. Louis where he was well-loved. He has had fun exploring the new house and figuring out what to do with the tiny shrieking human we’ve acquired in his absence. :) Tiger remains in Beijing where he has been boarded for the past 5 months. He nearly made it to Canada with a flight volunteer several times, but due to visa issues, the flights kept getting pushed back. Now that our plans are a bit firmer, we’re hoping to save him any additional flights and are hoping to book him on a direct flight from Beijing to Munich in April (If you have any leads on flight volunteers leaving China for Germany, give us a shout!). It has been a long road for him and while we are saddened by the separation, we know he has been in good hands throughout this time and are eager to see him again soon! Wedding Bells? For those who have been following our wedding saga, you may be wondering where this leaves us in terms of our wedding plans. This is the third wedding date we’ve booked, and we had hoped that the old adage of “third time’s a charm” might ring true in this case. The past year threw our world on its axis. We have focused the majority of our efforts on Kaia, returning stateside, and what our next steps might be. As the future has become a bit clearer for us, we’ve decided that squeezing a wedding into the midst of yet another international move is a bit crazy (even for us). So we have decided to cancel the wedding indefinitely. While it saddens us, we also know that we wouldn’t be able to have the wedding we’d envisioned: with friends, family, and our community from around the world all in one place. With the pandemic still an issue, borders remain closed, and too many unknowns exist. We hope to find the time to throw a stateside reception or celebration at some point in the future to celebrate with loved ones and will keep everyone posted of those plans when and if they should arise. Why Don’t You Just Elope? Well, that’s a good question. Actually….. we did! Follow us back in time to September 2019, won’t you? We were just beginning to connect with adoption agencies, when we realized that many were only willing to work with married couples. Our original planned wedding date was in July 2020, and we figured, why not check one more logistical item off our list while we were already traveling for vacation? Jess liked the idea of a private ceremony and we thought it was something we could reveal in jest a few months later at our actual wedding. Little did we know, that date would come and go while we were landlocked in China, along with a litany of other dates to follow. We find ourselves even more grateful now for that whimsical private ceremony that took place on the cliffs overlooking the ocean in one of Guam’s most beautiful villages, accompanied by the village mayor who presided over our ceremony, and our photographer and makeup artist who served as witnesses. It wasn’t the wedding that I’d envisioned, but it ended up being perfect (for us). :) So here we are, taking our third spin around the world together as a married couple (October 1, 2019 was our wedding date) with adventures that we couldn’t have ever imagined or hoped for ourselves. We still feel lucky that in the chaos of all that has happened in our world over the past several years, that we’ve had each other to lean on. What’s Next? We arrived in St. Louis last week and have been living a little like scavengers this week, collecting home items from neighbors, picking up furniture, unpacking old boxes in storage, and trying to put a makeshift home together that will get us through the next few months. Jess is excited to have the opportunity to sub for a few months and relearn the culture of schools in the US for a while, and I’m looking forward to reconnecting with friends and family members while we’re in the area. We have a visit with Jessie’s family to look forward to in celebration of her dad’s birthday and also plan to visit Kaia’s birth mama again before we take off for Germany. Our arrival there will be well-timed, as the school is enrolling Jess in an intensive language school for 6-8 weeks to get her started. The next chapter will include looking for a home, settling, and learning more about the school and community. Jess will be replacing the founding Head of School, which is never an easy task. However, their transition plans include the current Head ending the year, and allowing for a gradual release of responsibilities, which is ideal when taking on a new role. All in all, we are amazed at the whirlwind that has transpired over the past several months and are still a little in awe that we began the school year in one country and will be ending it in quite another. We look forward to seeing what lies ahead for us, and hope that our paths bring us a little bit closer to you in the interim. As always, our home is always open to you. We hope that if you make your way to Germany, you will come visit! Sending love, Jess, Michelle, & Kaia
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AuthorMichelle is an expat and globetrotter, currently residing in Augsburg, Germany. Originally from the US, she has called Guam, China, and Germany home. Her passions include collecting children's picture books, reading, writing, traveling, and trying to remove coffee stains from freshly cleaned shirts. Archives
February 2022
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