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.
No comments:
Post a Comment