Hi everybody! Brooks and I have a new xanga for our trip to Taiwan. We're leaving August 9th for a year, and thought that we should start up a new xanga as a couple to keep everybody updated. Hopefully I'll update more faithfully on that one. :) It's www.xanga.com/brooksandemilywalker. Hope you visit it and subscribe.

Emily

I have returned!

Hello everyone!

I have finally, if fleetingly, returned to the xanga world. I'm at my parents' house right now waiting to use the piano. (If anybody wants to give us a piano, please call me or just drop it off - we'll take it no questions asked.) Wendy, Gayle, Brett, and I are playing tomorrow night at the Naperville Jaycee's awards banquet as the background music, and I since I'd been engaged I had hardly played piano at all except for church. Thus in order to prepare for at least 45 minutes of playing (Wendy, Gayle, and Brett take care of the other 45 minutes) I needed to practice alot. I'm not really ready, but since it's background music if I just play slowly and cautiously (no gratuitous three-octave arpeggios), I should be fine.

I wish I could write as fascinatingly and as well as Sarah or Heather (Sarah earns the reward for best posts because they're excellent and frequent; Heather has second place because she doesn't post as much), but for right now I'll just tell you what we're up to.

To start off with, we're married. :) Very happily so. We spent the first month of our married life going on honeymoon and then moving in and settling in at our new home. We came back from our honeymoon to a beautiful looking house - while we were gone Brooks' dad had his crew at the house every day getting the flooring finished, the bathroom all installed, and siding re-done on the front of the house, plus a bunch of other more detailed things. It was so exciting to see the house in such a good condition, because when we left for our honeymoon it definitely wasn't ready to live in yet.

Starting May 1st, Brooks has been going to a TESOL certification course (teaching English) in Chicago at DePaul's Loop Campus. It's more than a full time job since he has to be there from 9am til 6:30 and takes the train there. He's usually gone just under 12 hours a day. That's quite a transition from the month of April when we both stayed home all day.

Meanwhile I've been home settling in, working on making curtains for our house, starting a garden, and looking for a job. I did a lot of cold-calls to local businesses to see if they needed help because I thought I would have to walk to work since once Brooks' job starts he'll take the car every day. BUT, then Brooks bought me a car! A beautiful, new, shiny...1985 Pontiac 6000LE. Lol. Not quite new and shiny, but beautiful to me. I like it. And it was the right price, too - $300 at a garage sale. So far I've had one job offer to be a medical receptionist at a business just about 5 blocks from my house, and then I've had a tentative promise of an offer to come later this week from a job at Medical Staffing Network a five-minute drive from out house. I'd much rather have the Medical Staffing job, and so I'm holding out for that one while hopefully keeping the receptionist card in my hand until I know for sure about the other job.

Brooks' job starts in two weeks at GlobalCom, a company in Westmont. He'll be a salesman for their telecommunications services for businesses. After the long hours of this TESOL course he's doing, this will be like a vacation. He'll probably be home a whole two hours earlier than he has been with the TESOL course.

As for going to Taiwan, it's been postponed slightly. We were working with Footprints Recruiting, an excellent English-teacher-placement company in Canada on a specific contract for private high schools in Taiwan. However, after we'd already been working on getting this contract for awhile, the schools in Taiwan notified Footprints that they were only accepting female teachers this year. So much for that. Then, because of the crazy tax system Taiwan has for foreigners working in Taiwan, we've decided to wait until at least January to go to Taiwan. If a foreigner arrives to work in Taiwan between January 1st and June 30th, he's taxed at about a 10% tax rate. However, if he arrives any time between July 1st and December 31st, he's taxed at about a 20% tax rate. So if we weren't able to go before June 30th, it doesn't make sense to go until January 1st. Of course we're not going just for the money's sake, but while we're at it it makes sense to be at least prudent with our finances. It seemed like God was directing the timing of all this, too. Just after we were made our decision to accept Brooks' job with GlobalCom after hearing that our position in Taiwan wouldn't work, we got a call from Footprints offering us another contract. It was within 10 minutes of accepting the GlobalCom job. The two job offers could have been switched 10 minutes the other way - Footprints could have called us ten minutes earlier and we would have not committed to anything yet.

Though we really want to go to Taiwan or another country soon, it has been relaxing to just settle in and get accustomed to being married before we have to pack and get visas and leave everything familiar. I'm finding that I have a much bigger desire to make a beautiful home and cook good meals that I thought I would. Perhaps by the time we're ready to go to Taiwan I'll be ready to leave it all behind. We shall see. In the meantime, maybe God has something here for us. Pray for us and let us know if you hear of any good teaching English positions.

Well, since it's only been over two months since I've updated, I guess that justifies a long post without pictures. Next time I'll post pictures but since this isn't my computer I don't have any here...perhaps tomorrow...perhaps in 6 months...

Signing off,

Emily Faith Walker (bride of Brooks Walker)

I'm gettin' married in the morning!!!

Brooks Charles Walker is the most wonderful man in the world.

Just in case you didn't understand that beforehand.

Emily Almost-Walker

It is now 23 days until our wedding. Sometimes that seems like way too long to wait until I can marry the best man in the world, and at other times I wonder how we will get everything done ahead of time!

Wednesday Dad and Mom Walker (wow...trying to get used to that!) closed on the house that Brooks and I will rent from them (rent with an option to buy). Now we're planning on how we want to fix it up, and what we want to do before the wedding and what can wait until afterwards. Yesterday Brooks ripped up the carpeting in the living room and hallway, and I'm so glad he did! There's beautiful hardwood floors under most of the carpeting and we're going to sand them down again and then refinish them. The hardwood extends into all three bedrooms also, so the entire house except the bathroom and kitchen will be hardwood by the time we're done. Brooks and his dad are also planning to pull up the linoleum and put tile in the kitchen and bathroom. It's very exciting to have a house to work on and set up, even if we will only be in it for a few months at first.....

because...

Brooks and I are going to Taiwan! We're going in June at the earliest and are going to teach English in either high schools, jr highs, or universities. He found a Canadian organization called Footprints Recruiting that specializes in recruiting English teachers for Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea. We have been talking about different programs, like ELIC through Wheaton college (teaching English in China), but decided that a year-long committment would be better at first. We knew we wanted to go sometime soon, but once he started looking for a job around here, he realized that almost any real job wants a commitment of at least 5 years, and if we wanted to go to Taiwan or China or somewhere sooner than that it made sense to just go now. I'm very excited, and I am just amazed that God gave me a man who would want to go spread the Gospel and explore the world with me!

BTW, since so many of you who will read this are Taiwan Ren, let me know if you guys have any particular advice. We don't have a departure date yet and don't know where we will teach. We have an interview with Footprints Recruiting coming up next week and will probably sketch out more details then. Generally the company doesn't know what positions they need to fill until about a month before they will be open since that's when the teachers inform the schools they will be leaving, so we will probably schedule an approximate departure and desired location, and then find out for sure at a later date.

Pray for us, please. We have a lot of decisions to make still, and are open for God to lead elsewhere, even at this "last minute".

"And Moses said to the Lord, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." Exodus 33:15-16

We're getting married in 37 days, as of today.

Not that I'm counting or anything...