Last March we went to and teacher's conference and had the opportunity to talk to an international school in Shanghai, China about possibly teaching at their school. The representatives told us to take a look at their website in August and they would post new employment opportunties for the 2009-2010 school year.
In August, Mike saw that the school had a few teaching opportunities for him, but there were not any positions available for me. It did not hinder us from applying though, as I am an part-time ESL teacher and considered finding opportunities to teach English in China.
We waited... and waited... and waited. All of our family and friends asked us over and over again, "When will you find out?" We said, "November!" November came and went and then started saying, "December!" During that time, we continued looking at other international schools and applied to a school in Cambodia. Then we heard about an overseas recruitment fair for teachers in Cedar Falls, Iowa that took place at the end of January. At the recruitment fair, 160+ schools come to Iowa to interview 650+ teacher candidates. It is a convenient fiasco that is completely stressful and totally wild. We signed up for the fair, which gave us access to over the schools websites and their vacancies. The trick was finding a school that wanted both a Spanish teacher and a PE teacher! We found several schools that had both positions... Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (Dubai), Kuwait, Korea, and Vietnam. We sent our resumes and letters of interest to the schools in the hope that they would want an interview with us. Then we played the waiting game while we researched the different countries and schools.
In the meantime, Mike continued looking at other international schools websites. In the beginning of January, he came across a Christian school in Bangkok, Thailand that had positions for both of us (a school that was not attending the recruitment fair). We applied on a Wednesday and by Thursday morning, I had already received an e-mail from the high school principal wanting to set up an interview! A week later, I had a 1.5 hour long phone interview with him. The following week, Mike had a 1.5 hour long interview with the elementary principal. We interviewed with different people because the position Mike was interviewing for was the elementary PE teacher and I was interviewing for the high school Spanish position. A week later, we had a two hour long interview with the head master of the school. At the end of the interview, he offered us the positions. Well aware of the fact that we were attending the recruitment fair the next weekend, he graciously awaited our answer upon our return from the fair.
After our interview, Mike and I both felt very neutral about going to Thailand. We had heard that it was a beautiful place and that the people were amazing, but Thailand is also known for its prostitution and night life. It is also an extremely fraudulant country. The school itself sounded great, but we knew that we also get paid less than what we are getting paid now. That was kind of difficult to wrap our mind around as a few of our goals were to pay off my student loan as quickly as possible, and as save up for the future. We also kind of had our hearts set on going to Vietnam.
So off we went to the fair the next weekend, knowing that we already had a job offer...
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