Saturday, July 31, 2010

In the beginning, there was a click on a link.

In January of this year, both my husband (Dusty) and I (April) were feeling a little dissatisfied with our jobs. They were both good jobs that were in our respective fields of study, and we liked the people we worked with, but we both felt like this wasn't it. This wasn't what we were made to do.

Both Dusty and I have been wanting to live in Japan for a while, but nothing we had pursued had worked out. Even when we weren't actively seeking new employment we'd poke around on various Web sites to see if there were any available leads. Usually, there were none.

Backing up a bit: I had grown up as a missionary kid (MK) in Tokyo, Japan. When I met Dusty in college in the US, he already had a love of the Japanese culture and wanted to live there someday. In 2005, when Dusty and I were still dating, we both visited Japan together and I showed him my old stomping grounds, including Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ), where I had spent most of my schooling years. One of the IT guys even let him help out a bit in the computer department while I was helping my aunt (the school's librarian) in the library.

So, when I was on my lunch break one day this past winter, I impulsively decided to see if my alma mater was offering any openings either of us were qualified for. Though none of the other times I had looked in the past several years had held any promise, this time there was a position that suited Dusty.

"Dusty!" I said in an e-mail to him. "You need to check this out! Maybe you could work at CAJ. Wouldn't that be neat?"

About an hour later I got an e-mail back: "Maybe. I'll look at it later."

Talk about anticlimactic.

The rest of the month I kept nagging him to look into it, and to possibly fill out an application. Naturally being a creature who is a bit resistant to change (especially compared to my usual jump-first-think-later tendencies), he was hesitant. Eventually he filled out an application, but looking back I think he did it more to get me to shut up than anything else. ;) He's told me since that he honestly didn't expect them to be interested in him (then again, he always has been a bit of an Eeyore).

But wouldn't you know it? They were interested, and it wasn't long before they set up a Skype interview and then offered him the job. Still reeling, we quickly updated our passports and got our visas, as well as purged and donated/sold most of our belongings. It was all very rushed and by the end we were both very stressed out!

However, by God's grace, it worked. Though it was a very bumpy process, we're now sitting in our new living room, in a small apartment overlooking a little field, some houses, and a tangle of telephone wires.

Some would say this view is not so great, but to me, it's simply beautiful.

JapanApartment
Photo by me.


Dusty starts his new job in about two weeks, and is signed on for a year. After that, only God knows what will happen. Will that be the end and then we'll move back to the US? Will we stay in Japan for another year? Five years? For life?

Well, I guess you'll have to keep reading this blog to find out. ;)

2 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you started a blog. Yay! I've already got you bookmarked!

    This is Claycat!

    My real name is Mary.

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