On January 29th, we headed down to Iowa for the recruitment fair. All along we had been praying for wisdom, clarity, unity in the decision, and a complete peace/contentment about wherever we ended up. Yes, this did include staying here in Minnesota as an option. I also prayed for only one job offer so that the decision wouldn't be difficult.
On the way down to Iowa, I kind of felt that God was calling us to Thailand. I ignored/resisted this thought because I was terrified of going to Thailand. Going to Thailand was completely out of my comfort zone in that I would have to learn how to teach AP Spanish. I knew I wanted to grow professionally, but I also knew that I loved being comfortable.
On Friday morning, we were up at 5 to start getting ready for the day. The day started out by checking in and seeing if any schools had contacted us to set up an interview. We went in thinking that we would have a couple of requests because we had heard back from a few schools via e-mail prior to the fair. We only received 1 request; it was very humbling as we saw others walk around with many yellow slips that indicated interview requests. We weren't as stressed out about the situation though since we knew that we had an offer, but it was still kind of hard to swallow. We also learned that of the 6 schools that we were hoping to interview with, one of them didn't even come to the fair. It was disappointing in that we knew that the number of schools interested in us were dwindling.
Then we attended a general information session about teaching overseas. Afterwards was the "Round Robin." Each school had a table set up in the convention center and essentially all 650+ educators race from table to table to set up interview times. We only had 5 schools to speak with, so we knew it wouldn't take too long and that we would probably be able to fit all of the interviews in that day. We made a plan of action of the order in which we would talk to schools and schedule interviews: Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, UAE (Dubai), Korea, China. We raced in and quickly found Vietnam. We were able to schedule an interview for early afternoon and were very excited at the possibility of going to Vietnam. Afterall, our hearts were kind of set on that country and school. Saudi Arabia, who had already given us an interview slip, gladly scheduled an interview with us for that afternoon as well. We were feeling pretty good about having two interviews scheduled. We approached the next three schools only to be quickly turned down by the schools. These three schools either wanted femal PE teachers or an experienced IB Spanish teacher... things we obviously could not change. We knew that God was already "weeding out" some of the schools to make the decision process easier for us, and we felt content despite only acquiring two interviews.
That afternoon we interviewed first with the school in Vietnam. The interview went well for me, but it was a little more difficult for Mike. The headmaster of the school was kind of grilling him. We walked away from the interview not really knowing what to think and unsure of whether or not we would get a second interview. Shortly after, we interviewed with the school in Saudi Arabia. The interview went great, the representative of the school expressed great interest in us, and we walked away certain that we would get a second interview. Mike was particularly happy as Saudi Arabia had been on his mind a lot.
That evening we went out to dinner and talked about the different schools and where we were feeling we were supposed to go. We both said that we felt that God was really calling us to Thailand... praise God for answering our prayer for unity in the decision. Then we talked about the two other schools and how the school in Vietnam was going to be undergoing some major changes in the next two years that we didn't know if we really wanted to be a part of, and the headmaster didn't seem like the most content person to us either so we didn't know if we would enjoy working for him. Although we had essentially made our decision to go to Thailand, we were still kind of on the fence with the school in Saudi Arabia. We decided that we would wait to hear back from them in the morning, just in case God changed our minds. That night, I slept the best that I had in months... I was so at peace with our decision to go to Thailand despite still feeling terrified of teaching AP Spanish. Praise God for answering our prayer for contentment.
The next morning we heard back from Saudi Arabia. We expected to receive an invitation to a second interview, but were surprised to find a letter that said that they liked us but that they didn't think they had any positions for us. Praise God for anwering our prayer for clarity and wisdom. We left Iowa and headed back home before even hearing from Vietnam because we knew that we wouldn't accept the position even if it was offered to us. Praise God for answering my prayer of only having one job offer!
So Thailand it is.
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