Yo-yo life overseas

Laura Marie Martin emerged from the University of Northern Colorado with no solid plans for the future.

"All my friends were getting serious jobs and I didn't want to face that," the English and history major says.

The alternative was to go abroad. Luckily, Martin quickly received a teaching offer and soon she and her mother were packing up her belongings, most of which she had just moved out of her apartment at school. She arrived at Wenzhou, a port city in East China's Zhejiang province, about a month after graduating in 2007.