People ask us how long do we plan on staying overseas. We usually say something along the lines of, "Well we have a contract for 2 years, but we plan on at least 4 years..." We're not trying to sell everything and live overseas for a short while. I'm thinking 8-10 years. I hear you can fall in love with the life. We'll be making less money but saving more!?!? Living in the Bay Area, the thought boggles the mind. You gotta have some bank to live well in the Bay Area. Property prices are obscene even after the housing bubble burst. I've also become more and more interested in living in a place like Vietnam or Amsterdam or Addis Ababa.

So beyond the exciting idea of our future, the nitty gritty is we got to really start to move shit. We've freecycled and craigslisted a number of things already. I've opened up a storage unit and now we just have to start moving things into the unit. I'm trying to go for at least one trip a weekend to the storage unit. Just get things there. But the hardest part is getting the stuff there. Every time we move something out of the house and just reduce the clutter that much more, I get excited. I'm ready to start my Latin American adventure with AL and Mr. Babyman. 

Apostilles, condos and our tempurpedic

You know what the fuck an apostille is? I had no idea until we got the checklist of paperwork that we have to gather. An apostille is like an international notarization. We gots to go to Sacramento to get an apostille. It's super deluxe. I was even pronouncing it wrong till I talked to my cousin, M&M. There is all this paperwork that we have to gather, notarize, and apostille. It's kind of absurd. And wouldn't you know it, my passport expired. So now I've got to pay $110 and wait for it to come back. Mr. Babyman also needs a passport. We have to create a personnel file and make a file for a Colombian work visa. Paperwork sucks. I hate dealing with bureaucracy. I always think of that Oscar Wilde quote, "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

I'm also meeting with realtors to talk about selling our condo. I'm thinking we would leave for Bogota on July 22. July 20th is Bogota's Independence Day. I don't want to arrive on that day or the following hangover day.


The only major item that we're thinking about shipping is our tempurpedic mattress. It is arguably the best material good we own. Everything else goes into a 5 X 5 storage unit. Been on craigslist trying to sell everything we can. It's kind of cleansing and freeing. We collect a lot of stuff in this world and become overly attached to that stuff.

Just a weird thing to think about

So the school that we're going to be teaching at is the school that mbh's brother went to for kindergarten when mbh's family randomly lived in Bogota. We may even live in the same neighborhood as mbh's parents did because it's within 15-20 minutes of our new school.  Of all the schools and positions that we've applied for, we get a job in Bogota Colombia. That's some weird ass shit.

Holy Shit! We're moving to Bogotá!

Every so often throughout the day I'll just trip on that. We've got 5 months to get our shit together and move to Colombia for at least the next 2 years. Now it's all about getting rid of shit... and we've collected a lot of shit.



So we got the Lonely Planet and Bradt guides to Colombia. I just read that Lonely Planet's USA headquarters is based out of Oakland California. Pretty fucking cool. I never heard of Bradt but just found out that it's British. Just a different way of looking at the same thing.


The one thing that I am a bit apprehensive about in Colombia is being a vegetarian. I'm actually lucky because I think it will be ok in Bogota. It won't be great like the Bay Area but it will be pretty damn good for Latin America. On www.happycow.net you can find vegetarian restaurants all over the world. Bogota has 26 locations for veggie/vegans restaurants or stuff like dat. I have made a vow to myself to visit each and every one of them. I've always had this dream of being an international food critic and when I went vegetarian it changed to international vegetarian food critic. Bourdain got a bad ass life of travel. But I'm going to go to every location and then review it on happy cow. Then through the magic of the internets, I will be living the dream. Live the dream baby. <insert turntable scratch>


But you know people the world over use some lard to cook shit. And I know that when I ask, some people will just lie to me because they will. People do shit like that. It is what it is. Oh yeah fyi, I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I just don't have the will to go vegan. Shit is too damn hard.


So in my devouring of all things related to Bogota, I learned about this former mayor of Bogota named Antanas Mockus. This guy is rapidly becoming one of my cultural heroes. He helped to change the culture of Bogota. I'm really interested in hearing what people say on the ground.

Check out this Danish documentary about Antanas Mockus and Enrique Penalosa. It tells an interesting story about a cultural change of a city. I think a lot about how to change culture in my school and Oakland. It's a hard fucking thing. Mockus and Penalosa were leaders in the culture change of Bogota. It's inspiring like Tunisia and Egypt.

2nd day of interviews

The night after our first day I signed up for this website called international school review. It's a website that allows for teachers to post up reviews of the schools anonymously. I learned about it from another teacher at the IRC.  It costs $29 to sign up but I figured it would be worth it. All the while I kept in mind to take the website with a grain of salt. People that are unhappy are the ones that are more likely to post up reviews. People that are happy don't tend to bother as much. After looking at it though, I decided to not go with the Casablanca American School. First, the school came to the IRC totally late to the game. They weren't even on the list of schools attending. Then, they had more than 10 jobs to fill. Why so many jobs? Seems like there was a mass exodus of teachers. Finally, after looking at the International schools reviews, it kind of confirmed my gut feeling. The school wasn't going to be the right fit for us.


So we got to the IRC at around 9am in the morning. We could take more time that day because we didn't have any interviews set up and there wasn't much going on except for second interviews and then second interview sign up opportunities at 12:30. When we got there, we immediately checked our mailbox. We had a note from the school in Beirut.


When mbh had interviewed for her position the day before, it was done knowing that they had already offered the position to someone else and that the school was waiting to hear back from that person. However, when I had interviewed with the really cool headmaster later on that day, he really took a liking to us and seemed really interested in hiring us. He had even set up a second interview for the following day. At one point in the interview when his phone went off, he turned to mbh and said "I think you're job just opened up." He was a real jokester and was making a bunch of playful jokes at my expense which was a real good sign. The headmaster even went over how much we would get paid at the school and how much we could save based upon our experience. No one did that in our first interview.


Anyways, the note said that the other person had accepted the job mbh wanted and that the headmaster could not in good conscience offer me the job because we wouldn't be able to survive in Beirut on just one salary. This really bummed me out. It was definitely a shot to the gut. After that interview, we both did research on Beirut and had started to envision ourselves in Beirut. Mediterranean climate...my favorite. A good jumping off point for Europe, Asia, and Africa.


However, we did get a note from the school in Colombia. They wanted us back for a second interview. These were the comedians. That meeting was at 10am. This was a good sign. While I was sitting around waiting, I heard one girl call up the recruiter for Senegal and say that she was declining his offer and going with Quito, Ecuador instead. This sounded like good news to me.


But what was going on with Vietnam. I saw the recruiter and I went to talk to him but he was just about to step into an interview with another person and told me that he would come and talk to me after that interview or drop a note in my box. They have to do a ton of interviews.


Well before he got done with that interview, mbh and I had to go and talk to the school in Bogota. The second interview went well. They were really interested in mbh (duh) for her literacy work and talked to me about if I could teach AP Economics. While I haven't taught AP economics, I have a pretty firm grasp of Econ and didn't feel scared to teach it. My political economy class is my favorite class to teach and I seem to get the best response from my students. Anyways, they said that I would have to get trained in AP econ, but they would pay for it all. At the end of the interview, they told us that they were really interested in us and that they would contact us around 4 with their decision. That was really great but we tempered our enthusiasm because of the whole Beirut thing.


We went back down to the lobby to wait things out and there I got a chance to talk to the recruiter for Saigon. He told us that he liked us but that we didn't have enough IB experience (actually any) and his board wouldn't go for that so he would have to keep looking. Another shot to the gut. That school had been our top choice. Feeling like shit, we decided to go and get some lunch. During lunch we got an email from the recruiter in Senegal. He wanted to know if we would do a second interview. We agreed to meet up later on in the day after our lunch.


So when we did our second interview with the Senegal recruiter that went really well. The guy was a cool guy and told us more about his school and answered some more of our questions. He seemed really interested in us and told us that he would contact again in a while. We basically figured that he was going to offer us positions. After that interview, we went down to the lobby and checked our mailbox again. The school in Bogota had already dropped a note and wanted to talk to us. We called them up and went to their room to talk to them. They offered us positions and told us that we were the team that they wanted and that they hadn't offered our positions to anyone else that whole conference. Then they went over the salary and benefits and told us to take our time to make our decision. They told us that we could tell them the next day if we wanted and that they were waiting for us. Mbh told them that she wanted to make a decision today but would need some time to think it over.


After that we were on cloud nine. We had a got offered positions in a school that was on our short list. Then we went to the cafe to think things through and when we were there we got an offer from Senegal. What a fucking position to be in! Offers from two schools that we wanted to work in. I knew where I wanted to go (Colombia), but mbh was torn. She speaks French and loves the ocean so she was really torn. At the cafe she left to talk to her mom and I called up a good buddy that gives good advice and has a wife with family in Bogota. I got to talking to him and then his wife and then mbh came back and I let her talk to my buddy's wife. My buddy gave the good advice that he would defer to his wife because at the end of the day you want mama to be happy. Cuz when momma ain't happy nobody is happy. Ice-T said at the end of the documentary Good Hair, "trust me, if a woman ain't happy with herself, she's going to bring nothing but pain to every f'ing body around her." Words to fucking live by. So I deferred to mbh. Then she talked things through and came to the decision of Bogota.


We headed back to the hotel to meet up with the recruiter and sign the papers. He was ecstatic and hugged us both. So now, Mr Babyman, mbh, and I are going to be moving to Bogota, Colombia.

1st day of interviews

So the first day of interviews starts with 2 hours of signups for interviews. This is another vetting process. We ordered our signup plan of attack by schools that had positions for both of us, then positions for me, and then positions for mbh. We got interviews set up for all the schools that had positions for both of us. Then we tried to get interviews with schools that had positions for just me and found that it was just too hard to make happen. So we dropped it and just went to get ready for our first interview.


Our first interview was for a school in Vietnam. The recruiter was really cool and sounded very interested in us. This school was at the top of our list. We could bank a lot of money it wouldn't be so bad for me to be a vegetarian in Vietnam. The interview could have gone on longer but we had our next interview to go to. Our second interview was for a school in Senegal. That recruiter was really cool and also seemed interested in us. He mentioned that he was going to call our references and asked us how serious we were. An excellent sign. Our third interview was with a school in Oman. This school seemed very interesting and the structure of it sounded wonderful. The superintendent that interviewed us was brilliant and had a very clear vision of what she wanted for the school. She seemed like a great person to work for, not a micromanager. She really sold mbh on Oman, which surprised me.


The more and more that I learn about IB, the more and more I wish I could have had an IB education. It really seems like a top rate education that teaches you how to be a critical thinker and really analyze. And of course, mbh and I really wanted it for Mr. Babyman. We could never afford such a great education in the States for Mr. Babyman, but at most of the schools we looked at, he would get taken care of because we would be teaching there.


Our 4th interview was for Bogota. This was a very different interview. The interviewers were a funny pair that asked us to ask them questions for 30 minutes. Then if they liked us they would ask us back for a 2nd interview the following day. This kind of threw us off our game but we got a good vibe off of them too. This school seemed like the most comprehensive school teaching to all levels of all the schools that we had interviewed with thus far. Our 5th interview was for a school in Lebanon. We had 2 separate interviews with 2 different people for our respective positions. The headmaster seemed very interested in us and at the end set us up for a second interview the following day. Our 6th and final interview for the day was with a school in Casablanca. The interviewer wanted to set up a followup interview but we could tell that he was dead tired. He had a lot of positions to fill and was doing back to back to back interviews.


Throughout the day as we finished our interviews, we would drop thank you cards into the boxes of the people that we interviewed with. At the end of the day, mbh and I felt pretty confident. Recruiters seemed really interested in us. It was really kind of flattering and a major ego boost. I was actually surprised how interested some of them seemed by me. Mbh is a much better teacher in actuality and on paper, but I guess I interviewed well.


So tomorrow morning we head into the IRC again and check our mailbox for any followup interviews. There, schools will offer us positions and we will basically decide where we will be living. I've made the spreadsheet of all the schools based on the ISS website and used numbeo.com to do cost of living comparisons for the SF and the various cities. I figure this time tomorrow, we'll know where we'll be living for the next 2 years.

1st day of the IRC

I got there at 10am. The tension was palpable. It was the beginning of a long ass day. Mbh went to work and joined me at 2pm. I got the lay of the land and talked to teachers that had been through the process or were going through it for the first time like me.


First impressions...hella white. I mean I was keeping my eyes out for colored people and I probably could have counted them on both hands and one foot. I looked around and I'm pretty sure I was the only Asian male there. I don't know if that works in my benefit or not. Considering the whiteness and white privilege, I'm going to go with not to my benefit. If people complain about the lack of racial diversity at the regular old American school level, then international schools take that to the next level. Anyways, it is what it is and I can only do my best and hope for the best.


So the presentation that I wanted to go to early in the morning got canceled. I wanted to see a presentation on Saigon South. Then the next one that I wanted to go to was at 3pm, but Mbh came in so we just focused on organizing what jobs we wanted.


The whole process is ridiculous and does not get the eco friendly stamp of approval. When you sign up for ISS, you upload your resume. Then when you get to the IRC you get a list of job openings available at the time of the IRC. The list that was being handed out in the morning was not up to date. It was the list from the previous day. The up to date list came out at 7pm after the candidate orientation. A lot of the ones that I had seen on the computer were gone by the time that we got to the IRC. Then the ones that were on the morning job list weren't always on the 7pm job list. It was a paper nightmare. And of course people go big with their resumes and trying to attract job offers. Anyways, you get a list of job openings and then there are file folders labeled with countries and recruiters' names. Then everyone drops another copy of their resume along with a "love note" into the folders of the countries and positions that they are interested in.  Recruiters periodically check their folders and then drop notes into a folder with your name to request interviews with you. And of course when you interview with the recruiters you should have another resume to give to the recruiters again. Fucking absurd. A forest must have died and we're complicit.


The orientation that ISS had was not very helpful and pretty poorly run. During the Q&A, there wasn't even consistency about repeating questions asked by audience members. Then when the new job list came out you had to check for the positions that you wanted and drop any new positions open. Why go home about 9pm exhausted as fuck.

Excitement

The SF IRC is starting next week. It actually starts on Sunday for Admin people and Monday for teachers. I'm gonna go in early Monday to check in, watch some school presentations and scope out the scene. Gotta get the lay of the land and how things are organized. I'm figuring that I can talk to somebody that works there and see if they can give me the 411. Maybe chat it up with someone from a school that I'm interested in. Gotta be all Dog Whisperer style. Calm and assertive.


Mbh and I are going to talk this weekend about how we are going to answer possible questions they'll ask. We gotta have our rap down so that we don't stumble over ourselves when we interview with people. We also have to buy thank you cards for the places that we interview. I think that I'll do something Chinese themed to commemorate Chinese New Year and hopefully make us stand out. Which reminds me that I have to pick up red envelopes for my students. 


By this time next week, we should have our placement and we'll know where we'll be living for at least the next 2 years.  So after going through the job search lists and making our spreadsheet, we separately made our own list of top 5 schools. Both of us agreed on Santiago, Chile; Curitiba, Brazil; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Brazil and Vietnam don't fit into my whole learning Spanish idea, but a Spanish speaking country could happen in our 3rd and 5th year if not in our first two.

The cat and the conference

First off I had to put my cat down earlier today. It really really sucked. She had started to exhibit signs of sickness on Sunday but we thought she'd shake it off. Cats barf. Hairballs and stuff like that. But she deteriorated rather quickly. Hoku was the best cat I've ever known and had. A peaceful and loving pacifier. She used to cry and get between us when mbh and I would argue. It always had the effect of calming us down. She loved to knead on your lap before she sat on it. She used to lick my hair to groom me. She would drink water from her bowl by dipping her paw into it and licking the water off of her paw. She didn't meow that often it was mainly chirps. I had trained her to come to me which she did 90% of the time (she was still a cat), and one cat trick is equal to 5 dog tricks. She wasn't very demanding except to sit in your lap with you. A whole lot of personality for one little animal. I miss her right now. 


In an effort to not have to obsess about my sick cat at night, I made a spreadsheet about various schools. Mbh and I also talked about what schools we would choose to interview with first and would immediately say yes to. When offered a position you pretty much have to decide either that day or by the end of the conference. If we can get a gig in a Western European country with good health care and hospitals then we would immediately say yes to that. If not, I am really crossing my fingers for Santiago, Chile. The international school in Santiago seems to have the best benefits of the Latin American schools that have openings for us.


However, I've also broadened my horizons to include some other places too. I knew nothing about it until today, but Curitiba, Brazil seems to be a really cool fucking place. Real eco-friendly city that is supposed to be some good urban planning dream. Ho Chi Minh city also seems pretty cool.


When we get to the conference, we are also going to drop off resumes and attempt to interview with some schools that don't have openings listed. At the end of the day, these private schools are looking for good teachers. They are private schools, we don't need to be credentialed in a subject to teach it. So they'll want mbh and they will get me too.


Also, it's good to hear from other teachers that they have friends that went the international school route and they got great postings with far less experience. Mbh has a decade worth of teaching experience and I'm entering year 6. I'm pretty sure we'll get a position though I won't rest on it.

Gameplanning

Mbh says these recruitment fairs are a monster. We need to have a plan of attack. Which schools do we want to interview with in what order? Which school if offered a position would we immediately say yes to? What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? You know, stuff like that.

Mbh being socialized as an American woman got all anxious and excited to buy a new outfit for the interview days. I wasn't looking to buy something new, but why the hell not. It is better to look marvelous than to feel marvelous. We got a lot of different reasons to teach abroad so we have to take all those things into account. ISS has a job search engine that finds all the schools with open positions. They also have an email alert system when new jobs open. I love getting emails from them. It makes me giddy.

Thinking about doing a spreadsheet (nerd right) on the school location, salary range, benefits, housing allowance, potential savings amount, taxes, and stuff. We're going to have to weigh a number of factors. For one, mbh and I want to have another baby. Babygurl! Quality of hospitals and coverage matter. Shit is ridiculously expensive for health care in the US. We put Mr. Babyman on mbh's health plan and it went from the $100-200 range to now where it's $800 something. Shit like that just pisses me off so bad. Anyways, I want to be someplace where my health isn't a commodity. I don't want to have to think about money when someone is in the hospital. I shouldn't have to think the way about people the way that I would think about my cat in the hospital.

Anyways, life is busy so we're planning to really gameplan Wednesday night. Hoo rah!

Our big decision

So my better half (mbh) and I have decided to go on an adventure with Mr. Babyman and teach overseas. We have many reasons for wanting to do this. First, how fucking cool is an overseas adventure with the family. Global adventures are the spices of life for me. Second, we'd like to stack paper and be able to put ourselves and Mr. Babyman in a house with a yard, preferably in the Bay Area. Third, I want to learn Spanish fluently so that I can come back and talk to my Latino students' parents. Well that and yell at them in Spanish. OMG, am I gonna be Ken Jeong in Community? Fourth, I gots me the travel bug. I wanna get the fuck out! I'm tired of the BS here. I want to be tired of some International BS.

Mbh used to work at ISS (International School Services) and knew someone at COIS (council of international schools) so we decided to set up files with both to improve our chances.

First, we set up a COIS file. This was good because it got our butts in gear, and COIS was free. We quickly realized that it was all about the recruitment fair. These companies don't spend all their money paying people and setting up these fairs overseas to have you get hired online. At the end of the day, people still want to do the face-to-face-meet-and-greet. That and I'm sure human resources want to travel around the world too. COIS had fairs that we could go to but their first one was in London. Their fair in the US was in Chicago with ISS, but it was the week after the ISS San Francisco fair.

Since mbh, Mr. Babyman, and I live in the Bay Area, it made sense for us to set up a file and go to the ISS fair in San Francisco. That fair is from February 6-10, 2011. But before we could set up a file and attend the conference...we had to get beaten over the head by the setup and registration for ISS. $185 per person to set up a file and $290 a person to register for San Francisco. That's right. $950 for the both of us to set up files and attend the conference. Like I said, they ain't trying to get me hired via Skype interview. We figure that schools probably go to the files and online interviews if they don't get good bites at all the fairs or they have mid-year emergency hires. That's what they did to get mbh's friend when she set up a file too late and had missed all the fairs that year. Even though I feel violated by the setup and registration costs, it's still better than the cost of plane tickets, hotel, and the hassle of figuring out childcare for Mr. Babyman and catsitting. Plus, who wants to go to Chicago in February? The average lows are all below freezing. I'm not going skiing.

My top 6 choices for places to teach are The Netherlands, Spain, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru. The Netherlands. Great health care and it's the fucking Netherlands. Spain, where better to learn Spanish? Plus, I'll be able to easily make trips to Mondragon to study cooperatives. Also, I got a few good friends on the continent and the island. Venezuela, I have a good friend that lives in Caracas and I hear the country is just beautiful. Ecuador, I hear this is also beautiful and the Galapagos are here. Biodiversity baby! Chile, My friend that worked on the Canadian-French-Hawaiian telescope said that the two best places in the world to look at stars were the Big Island and Santiago, Chile. Peru, Mbh and I had a great time in this country and the Incan civilization is fascinating. Machu Picchu is amazing.