This post has nothing to do with fitness except in the ways that we needed to physically move ourselves from one government building to another. No, this post is all about paperwork! Lots and lots of paperwork. Even though my parents work internationally and dragged me along with them everywhere, I really had no idea just how much goes into an international move until this last year.

I’ve touched on the difficulty of deciding what to bring and what to leave in the US (or get rid of entirely), but that is only one aspect of this whole process. There is another part of moving that involves a ton of documentation. The following list is more or less what we have had done/turned in so far:

• Medical insurance forms
• Life insurance enrollment
• HIPAA authorization form
• Direct deposit enrollment
• US state tax declaration form
• State tax form
• W4 tax form
• Emergency contact form
• Unofficial transcripts
• Digital diploma scan/digital issue date form
• Recommendation letter (waived–woohoo!)
• Curriculum vitae
• Physical passport
• 4 passport photos
• Digital passport scan
• Digital passport photos
• Health record (Required: chest x-ray, ECG/EKG, and HIV/AIDS testing. Everything had to be filled out, signed, and stamped by our doctor. We have a follow up appointment for travel immunizations.)
• Criminal background check (involved getting a clearance letter from the FBI and two sets of fingerprints)
• Visa applications
• Authenticated marriage certificate (Surprisingly, we already had one of these lying around from when I got my legal name change.)

Although this is the extent of what I understand to be the entirety of our documentation, I’m fairly positive that there will be more paperwork to fill out once we get in country. And, if it means I’ll get to live and work in Mongolia, then all of this legwork is definitely worth it!