Ok, only just come across this thread, so here goes.
Name is John I'm 51 and I now live and work in China. I'm married to a local woman 13 years my junior and we have a 3 1/2 year old daughter.
When I was 16 (1979) I joined the Royal Air Force as a 'mover' (now called Logisticians). Traveled around a fair bit including Belize, N. Ireland (total of 6 years), Cyprus, Germany, Falklands, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and many many other shorter visits.
Never once in all that time did I meet a lady I wanted to spend more than one night with, (let alone a lifetime), then via a complicated series of introductions and friends of friends in 2004 I met and married my Chinese wife and realised that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, not continually leaving her for another desert.
Final 7 years of my 32 year career was as an instructor and course designer this is where I got the teaching bug and also decided to finish me edumacation that I'd neglected.
After 5 years of trying we were still childless and resigned to that as our future so surprised as heck one morning when my wife showed me the pregnancy test (positive) and life changed.............. a lot, our daughter was the result and my determination not to be constantly separated by the military life hardened.
After 5 years as an instructor I was becoming a senior instructor and through my education courses had become the most qualified 'teacher' in the school, realising the gulf separating military instructors (or RAF ones at least) from our civilian counterparts lead to some increasingly hostile discussions with 'authority' over the training and respect we gave our instructors and the lack of civilian qualifications. This eventually led to me deciding to take my pension and run.
Looking for a new future, teaching was what I wanted to do, (it's a vocation type of thing), my parents were dead but my wife's family, are very much alive (one of the benefits of having a much younger wife), so relocation to China (with our 30 day old daughter) was the decision. We intend to stay out here until our daughter is high-school age (another 8 years), then move back to England for her education.