Well this is it. Down to the final days. Next post will be from our new home in Ecuador. Our friends have had some wonderful gatherings for us to say goodbye which we have appreciated greatly.
In these two weeks we have taken our final steps to make our way to our new home. My wife has applied and been accepted to teach English online. So she will have a 2 hr a day position to teach people in China how to speak English.
Tomorrow we will get a criminal record check which we will get certified at DFAIT and then at the consulate as back up if we wish to change VISAS while in South America.
Since Ecuador uses the American dollar we decided to open an American dollar account here and will do as we have read online. The plan is to open up a local bank account in Ecuador where we will transfer the funds we need for the month on a monthly basis.
So I guess this is it. See you on the other side.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Preparations
Two weeks gone by and the day is drawing ever closer. Here are a few steps we have taken in preparation of our Journey.
We were able to make contact with friends of friends who put us in contact with other friends. From there we managed to find a rental house for our first month. So at least upon arrival we know where we are going.
Visas, this was a tough one. Since we are in our 30's we cannot apply for a retiree Visa as we don't have a source of income, we only have what we sold our home for. And as we have no work contacts or specialty we could not apply for a work Visa. This really left us 2 options Volunteer or Tourism. The volunteer vise would give us up to 2 years if only there was an organization we could have hooked up with. So after everything we decided upon the Tourism. We are going in for 6 month Tourism Visa which we can extend by 3 months once we are there. Everything goes well we will find ourselves the needed opportunity to extend this by whatever time we like when we arrive. The Tourism Visa was quite easy just a matter of going to the Consulate with the required paper work and applying.
The plan ticket was not too hard either. For this we decided to pay the extra 30$ a ticket and go to an agency. Which ended up saving us as we are now leaving from a closer airport than initially planned. We also decided on taking extra insurance for the first 2 weeks until we land and get our feet wet, then from everything we read it is quite reasonable to have Pay as you go health care.
A final step we decided to take was order a Simm card from
eBay. This way upon arrival I have an active phone ready to go. I have purchased a QuadBand cell phone and purchased an unlock code online from cellunlocker which now allows me to use my phone anywhere in the world.
We were able to make contact with friends of friends who put us in contact with other friends. From there we managed to find a rental house for our first month. So at least upon arrival we know where we are going.
Visas, this was a tough one. Since we are in our 30's we cannot apply for a retiree Visa as we don't have a source of income, we only have what we sold our home for. And as we have no work contacts or specialty we could not apply for a work Visa. This really left us 2 options Volunteer or Tourism. The volunteer vise would give us up to 2 years if only there was an organization we could have hooked up with. So after everything we decided upon the Tourism. We are going in for 6 month Tourism Visa which we can extend by 3 months once we are there. Everything goes well we will find ourselves the needed opportunity to extend this by whatever time we like when we arrive. The Tourism Visa was quite easy just a matter of going to the Consulate with the required paper work and applying.
The plan ticket was not too hard either. For this we decided to pay the extra 30$ a ticket and go to an agency. Which ended up saving us as we are now leaving from a closer airport than initially planned. We also decided on taking extra insurance for the first 2 weeks until we land and get our feet wet, then from everything we read it is quite reasonable to have Pay as you go health care.
A final step we decided to take was order a Simm card from
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