is today a....? what day is it?

i keep asking myself this question and thinking of the dude. the corner of this computer tells me it's wednesday, so there you go. we're in montezuma right now, living the dream. :) after some initial frustrations (a very long journey, a hotel very far from everything - including lights, someone's mom...) things started getting good. we're staying at our second beach side accomadations and we're at my favorite beach in all of costa rica. doesn't get much better.

as nice as it will be to see everyone next week, wouldn't it be better if you all came here to see me? no snow, i promise!

think about it.... :)

the old "christmas tan"

off to the beach bright and early tomorrow morning to get going on my christmas tan.

what?

you're not working on your christmas tan?

WHAT??!!

it's SNOWING???!!!

yeah, i'm gonna cry when i get home.... finished my new old job today, spent the afternoon at the staff party, drinking and singing karaoke. then we went to the nutcracker tonight, el cascanueces, pretty good. now i'm off to bed. getting picked up at 5am to get to the bus station. but i'll have sand between my toes by mid-afternoon!

the hard part is over

well, part of the hard part is over. even though school ended last week (my new school) the teachers all have to come in this week to finish up grades and talk to the other teachers about the students for the next year. so i've kind of been doing double duty this week. though i didn't have any grades to finish or anything, i had to go in a couple of days this week... which was pretty exhausting. (it's a lot of bus time to get there from my current apartment). but now i've got a curriculum map to edit, some books to peruse, and see ya in january.

just one more week of my old job - and it's the easy part. since the kids program finished last week, i have friday afternoon and saturday off this week and next. which is awesome. from here on out i have REAL weekends. so next week i have two classes with my one-to-one guy, and two lesson of revision for my ibm classes, then two lessons where they'll be taking their exam. easy-peasy.

of course the part of the hard part i still have to do is find a new place to live.... but i've got a good portion of january to sort that out.

in completely unrelated news, i get this newsletter from a website called boots 'n' all and one of the stories really made me laugh. so i thought i'd share it. it's about driving in india. i actually had this idea when i was there of doing like a guide to driving in india, in a funny way (which is surely not an original idea, but still). because let me tell you they are insane. but i never actually did it and i sort of forgot a lot.... this brought it all back. enjoy!

what are you? in 4th grade?

so my "test" turned out to be nothing like i was expecting, but still pretty difficult. actually it wasn't a test at all. at least not in the traditional sense. i went in and after waiting for over 30 minutes i went in to talk to the administrative woman who i had been speaking to on the phone. basically she just wanted to get to know me a little better, get a sense of what kind of person i am and stuff. the snag was that her english is not that good, and my spanish is not that good. i mean i can get by, but i can't do interview BS in spanish.

so the first part of the struggle was figuring out what the question actually was. "how your family?" (do you have brothers and sisters? where do they live? how is your relationship?) "how your career?" (where do you see yourself in 5 years?) etc. we actually had a really nice chat, even though i wasn't really sure what the questions were sometimes and then i was trying to answer in a way so that she would understand me. obviously not the ideal interview situation. the last thing she asked me to do was draw a picture of a person, any person (clearly some sort of psychological profile type test) and write 2 paragraphs about anything. (i decided to tell of my love for gallo pinto).

i could have sworn she told me she would call the next day and tell me the grade. and after a moment it occurred to me that she probably meant what grade i would be teaching. so i was pretty excited. the next morning i had my one on one class and then i hung around school for a little while so i wouldn't be on the bus when she called. well, she never called on wednesday. or thursday. then i was starting to get a little worried, but when i had spoken to the principal the week before she had told me that she would be making hiring decisions by the end of the next week.

friday i was running around like a crazy person all day, trying to sort out the end of year stuff for my current kids, and nearly forgot i was waiting for a call. but when i got out of my 3-6 class i had a voice message. rapid-fire spanish this is the pan-american school, looking for ann doremus, call at this number (which even my native spanish speaking friend had to listen to twice). well, obviously i tried to call right away, but being after 6 on a saturday, i knew i would have to wait until monday.

so we went to the beach this weekend. because we deserve it. and i got back just in time for my class, so i called the school from the beach this morning. i talked to the same lady again. she said something.... huh? como? you work pan-american school next year.

FABULOUS

she told me that she still had to speak with the principal about which grade she had decided for me and would call back in like 30 minutes. 4 hours later i called her back. 4th grade. and could i come to the school the next morning.... at 8am. blah. i mean i realize that when i'm in school i will have to be there before that. but for right now i live on the other side of the city and it takes me nearly 2 hours of buses and hoofing across downtown to get there.

so i think i'm going to watch another episode of alias and then it's bed-time. i'm exhausted. had a bit of an ordeal getting back from the beach today... we tried to get the 9:30 bus, but it was full. and the next bus wasn't until 12:10. and i'm supposed to be ready to go at the school by 4. it would have been a miracle if that had actually worked. so i ended up getting picked up in town somewhere and having the other teacher bring my books. so yeah.

yeah me! :)

i hate job searching....

... but i'm doing it. actually, i had started about a month ago (not sure if i mentioned this already). i found 4 schools that i was interested in and i sent them my resume and a cover letter. one of them told me straight away that they did not have any openings for the 2008 school year. two of them i never heard from at all. and one of them called my current employer, who was a little surprised to say the least. and so was i when they asked me about it. i tried to explain it away, blah blah blah, i want to eventually work in a school, more time with kids, some schools don't start until september (which is actually true, but almost all of them start in february - they do southern hemisphere school schedule here).

i mean who does that? calls your current employer for a reference? i thought there was sort of an unspoken thing about that.... but clearly not. so i sent an e-mail to them and to the other two schools i hadn't heard from saying my current employer will not give a reference until we agree on an end date for my contract (until i give my notice, which i hadn't done at that point) but here are two other people you CAN contact IN COSTA RICA.

after that i heard nothing. and things got a little crazy here. i had lots of stuff going on, i had my spanish exam (nivel inicial - which i won't get the results from for about 10 weeks), i was trying to resist the urge to strangle the panamanian in his sleep (he is possibly the most inconsiderate person i have ever met), etc., etc.

well, i finally decided i needed to get serious about the finding a job thing (man, i hate looking for jobs. and apartments for that matter, which i'll have to do soon as i find a job). so i found some more schools that i liked and i sent out my resumes and cover letters again. i decided to send another e-mail to the eager school, saying i've actually put in my notice and my school will now provide a reference, i'm still interested.

well two days later i get a call for an interview! so last friday i had an interview, which i think went pretty well. i spoke with the primary school principal and she had a couple of openings she was trying to fill. she thought i could teach 5th grade science because i had a bachelors of science (i tried to dissuade her on this idea as best i could - computers does not equal science. but i would do it if it was all they offered me.) but the other thing she had, which i told her i was most interested in, was 3rd or 4th grade language arts.

so she said i would have to come in and do some sort of test early this week (hopefully this is kind of like "are you smarter than a primary school student?" kind of stuff and not too much about teaching theory) so i'm still waiting for that call. and she will have made her decisions by the end of this week. which is great to know, but now i've been waiting all morning for my phone to ring to set up the time to do this test thing!

so fingers crossed everyone, this is a great school that i would love to work at!!!