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!!!

possibly not a surprise...

but yesterday i quit my job. i had been planning to line up something else before i put in my notice, but since i'm supposed to give a bimester's notice (which is two months - but i can't give notice halfway through a bimester) it just wasn't going to be possible. i'm looking to teach in a bilingual high school next year, and they're not really hiring at this point. they still have another month of class and then they have almost 2 months off. so my last day at the instituto britanico will be december 14th. then i'll be hanging out at the beach for a week. and then coming home for a couple of weeks. hopefully by then i'll have a job lined up. that's the plan anyway.

in other news i just paid my first cell phone bill, which i had been waiting patiently for, since i wasn't really sure how much i was really using it (but it seemed like a lot). well, they don't really mail bills here - because they don't really mail anything (i mean my "address" is from this store, 100 meters south, 400 meters west....). so basically you get a text message that tells you it's time to pay your bill. and you either go to a supermarket or pharmacy (these are the places you pay your bills - everything, phone, internet, electricity, water...) or depending on your bank you can pay online. well i had a friend help me set up my online banking yesterday, because apparently my bank does online bill pay (all my utilities are included in my rent, so i don't ever deal with that). entered my phone number and my information came up. my bill was ¢4,545. a little less than $10. :P

and the last thing i have for today is a picture. of things that come in plastic packages. i was terribly amused by this when i first arrived, but really it's for the best here. because they don't really do recycling (at least not very much of it) it's probably better that they have things in plastic bags instead of bottles and jars - less garbage. so here we have: spaghetti sauce, salsa, sour cream, mayonnaise, and ketchup.

i never get to go anywhere...

so as promised i finally have a couple of pictures from panama. and one from puerto viejo (on the right). i actually hope to have some more from puerto viejo soon. i think i wrote about swimming out to this massive coral/rock thing, well, i'm waiting for those photos from a friend.

anyhow. these are some of the dolphins we saw (yeah, dolphins!) they were just sort of swimming around in this bay. it was pretty cool. i didn't really get many good pictures (most of them were just of water, or the tip of a fin) but this is one of the good ones. i think you can tell that they are dolphins and not sharks...


the other picture i have is of the place we had lunch at. i think bocas del toro is such a cool place. i mean, it's basically a set of islands, and everywhere has a dock, and all of the restaurants and bars and stuff have little docks and you can sit by the water... so after seeing dolphins, hanging at a beautiful island beach, and cruising around in a speed boat, we had lunch at this cool place. man, i love bocas.


not sure what my next plans are, still trying to work out work stuff... i'm hoping to get a new job next year working in a bilingual high school. of course the complication is that i need to give a "bimester" notice (that's a two month session here - it's kind of spanglish, not a real word in english) at my current job and that's by the end of next week. i've sent resumes to a few schools that i'm interested in, and i know one of them actually called my current school (which didn't go over that well with my boss - who does that? calls your current employer?) but i haven't heard anything else. the thing is, there's a high liklihood that i will get a job at another school. but it might not be until closer to the end of the school year (which is december here - they run on southern hemisphere school schedules for the most part). so do i put in my notice now so that i'm actually available for another job? or what? let's have some opinions please!!!!

new and soon to be one and only

so i have a new job. and when i start this new job, it will be my one and only job. and i'm guaranteed 24 hours a week (and that's full time for english teachers in costa rica). i will no longer be looking for second jobs like it is my job. so that's exciting. more exciting is that i will be seeing an increase in salary. instead of making a measly $5.50 an hour i will now be raking it in at the incredible rate of $6.00 an hour!!! i'll also get a foreign hire stipend of ¢84,000 a month - which rocks and i'll get two hours of free spanish classes every week.

so things are looking good. luckily this new school is running on the same bimester schedule as my current school - so i can finish out my term here (instead of leaving in the middle) and then start my new school straight away. they're also going to get me a work visa. which is a good thing. though i do kind of like the idea of *needing* to go on a mini-vacation every three months to renew my visa. but whatever.

the only bad thing is that colleen is leaving at the end of this bimester. she had always planned to go back to the states this summer for some weddings and to make a little money. but now it's looking like she won't come back in the fall. so i've got to find either a new roommate or a new place to live. that'll be a spanish adventure, for sure.

next week is semana santa - holy week - which means there are no classes. and since i need to get my visa renewed, colleen and i are heading to nicaragua for the week. we have a 10 hour bus journey this sunday, and then we are spending a couple of nights in granada. after that we are heading to the island of ometepe in lake nicaragua. the island is formed by two volcanoes. there was actually an article about it in the paper two weeks ago, and it looks pretty spectacular. we'll spend 3 nights there, do some hikes, see some ancient petroglyphs, and hang at the beach a little. i'm looking forward to it.

i'm not sure how internet connected this island is going to be, but i'll post a full report when i get back, and hopefully some pictures. oh - and also the answer to the mystery device contest. which no one won, by the way. :P

my first day of unemployment

and AWWWW YEEEAAAH it feels good to be unemployed. :) well, more truthfully, it feels good to not be going back to that particular job... i do realize i will have to work again at some point. but still. for now, i'm pretty happy.

two months from now i'll be starting my teacher training course in costa rica. it's meant to be pretty intensive, so in the meantime i plan to get myself organized as much as possible. relax as much as possible. study up on some english grammer. and possibly take on some temp work after i get back from hawaii.

for now i'm reading through my let's go costa rica (which is 3 years out of date, since, irritatingly enough, the new version will come out just after i leave for CR - grrr), flipping through my costa rican spanish phrase book, and thinking about starting to listen to my spanish cd's. i'm also thinking about taking a spanish language course down in CR after i finish my training course. it makes sense, since i'm intending on staying for a while...

anyway. i'm sure these two months will just fly by, so if i don't call you, you should definitely call me. :) more later.

the other side of the planet

my great france and italy trip in the spring of 2003 came after a 5 month contract that was leading nowhere. i decided that since i had nothing holding me back - no rent/mortgage, no car payment, no full time job - it was the ideal time to make the trip. and it most definitely was. however. i never imagined my job search post-france-and-italy would be 3 times harder than the pre-france-and-italy one.

naturally i took it easy after arriving home. i watched soaps, sat in the sun with the dog, and cooked. but after a couple of months i started to run out of money. and i started to think about finding work. plus after not really doing anything or having any museums or historical sites to see, i was getting bored.

my father knew someone at his company who was looking to hire some junior level database admins, people to be trained to take over for the experienced dba's when they moved on to bigger and better things. so with my computer science background, some basic database experience, and an inside connection i managed to get a phone interview.

and then i waited. and waited. for this manager to call me back. my father's contact said i was a good candidate and would almost certainly get the job. but still i waited. and nothing. i started thinking about moving to hawaii, living in a small shack on the beach, and working at some technology company. i often have this fantasy when i read a trip to the stars, by nicholas christopher, which i have done 5 times. i even applied for a job in hawaii, though never really expected anything to come of it.

"i just feel like something else is in store for me, that this is not how things are supposed to be for me. i'm craving something else. something different and new and exciting. something else..."

disappointed, i started contemplating other careers. i started thinking about getting back into dancing, maybe auditioning for disney in the fall. i thought it would be fun to be a travel agent (my nana already thought i was hers), i could study to do that and talk about travel all day. i started looking at some crappy jobs, just to get some cash. i applied for an answering service job, and even starbucks. but i never heard back from anyone.

then i finally got a call from a headhunter, he had this junior web developer job. only a 6 month contract, but i thought as long as i don't go to europe at the end of the contract i should be in good shape. i was excited, but again i was left without a response, positive or negative...

until one day in august i saw a posting on monster.com for english teachers in japan. how it ended up in my technology keyword job search, i will never know. but as i read the job description i became more and more animated. they wanted to know if i had a passport, had i traveled internationally before (why, yes...), did i have any teaching or tutoring experience (well, sort of...). the more i read, the more i felt this was the perfect job for me. i applied right then and there.

things moved quickly after that. i received a letter saying my profile was a match for what they were looking for. i was asked to come down to boston for an "informational interview". and then i was offered the job. i had a job. I HAD A JOB! on the other side of the planet, but a job no less.

i discovered the joy that is temping, allowing me to work menial jobs that i could leave at any time. i managed to save up enough money to cover my flight. i started planning and packing and preparing. i was alternately thrilled and terrified by what lay ahead of me. and by the end of october i was making my final preparations for the adventure of a lifetime...

next time, the journey.