As Jenna mentioned in recent blogs, we're at a point in the process where things don't progress too quickly. We were hoping to be preparing for the homestudy and go into the first of the year ready to be activated. That is clearly not going to happen.
Part of the issue is that we haven't been given many direct answers by our adoption agency. That has been a point of frustration for both Jenna and I as we just want to know how close we are to being able to go through the homestudy process.
Meanwhile, we have been knocking off smaller, easy home projects (like ripping out carpet) and paying off our massive load of student and credit card debt.
A new job!
Earlier this week, I was hired as a teacher for VIP Kid. Jenna has been teaching for them (in addition to her full time job at the elementary school) for the last year. She normally works about 15 hours a week (mostly weekends) to pick up extra income.
Since I normally work late nights with my full time job, I am going to teach in the mornings, hopefully also around 15-20 hours a week.
Who needs sleep!?!?!
Seriously, I am excited to take on this new job, and we definitely feel it will help us reach our goal of financing the adoption even sooner.
In case you don't know what VIP Kid is, we get to teach children in China how to speak English. Using a webcam and a prepared powerpoint, we teach children basic sentence structures, vocabulary and how to blend sounds to become fluent at the English language.
Although I don't have a teaching license, my experience demonstrating science at COSI in addition to having a bachelor's degree was enough to be qualified.
Calling off the auction, for now
As some of you saw, we were planning on doing an online auction as a fundraiser for the adoption. For now, we're postponing the auction. One big reason for the delay was we found that a lot of people/groups/companies were interested in contributing only if the auction was held in-person. Plus, this will make distributing auction items easier than trying to get them delivered all across the state.
We're hoping to reschedule the auction at the start of the year, and do it as an in-person event (sort of a celebration). We'll definitely keep everyone posted!
