Visas. No, not the plastic kind you use when you are out shopping.  The piece of paper or stamp that says you are allowed to visit, live, or work in a foreign country.  It seems like we are constantly either renewing or applying for these.

Doing the process stateside is actually harder.  We are blessed with teammates that are willing to help us out back on the China side, but we have a lot of paper-chasing still to do on this side of the world.

The girls all need new passports as well.  So we are off to Walgreens soon to get their passport pictures.  I told them they need to look nice because they will have to live with these pictures for the next 5 years. And, it isn’t like in the states where only immigration/airport personnel see those pictures.  In China, you show your passport as your id for everything.

Let’s see visa paperwork + cost x 6 (not counting the 2 that will join later) people + passport paperwork + cost x 4 people = a whole lot of time + frustration – $1500 from our wallet

The value is absolutely priceless!