The beginning...

The adventure is beginning.  Really, it began months ago, but it's real now.  Last fall, I registered for the UNI Overseas Placement Fair and began researching overseas schools, compiling my resume and letters of recommendation, and writing my personal statement and cover letters.  In December, I began contacting schools that would be at the fair, expressing my interest in their open positions.  I heard back from quite a few asking me to stop by at the fair for an interview.  After student teaching ended in mid-January, I spent two frenzied weeks researching my top schools in detail and prepping for my first real teaching interviews.  And then, the date of the fair arrived. 

The UNI job fair was a whirlwind of intense decision making.  After the round robin interview-sign up, I walked away with 9 scheduled interviews, although three of the schools I was most interested were scheduled in late interview slots on Saturday, and those positions ended up being filled before the time for my interview came.  However, by the end of Friday, I had been offered two jobs, and two other schools expressed intense interest.  On Saturday, it came down to a stressful decision between the Guamani Private School in Guayama, Puerto Rico, and a quality school in Saudi Arabia (a country not even on my radar before the fair, but a school which had gone out of their way to recruit me).  With the support of my family (hooray for cellular phones and the internet), I signed with the school in Puerto Rico.

So, in approximately six months, I will pick up my life in the States, leave my friends and family behind, and move to Puerto Rico.  I will be teaching 7th and 8th grade English there for the next two years.  I can't really put into words my excitement level. 

Also, I must find a way to share the relief I felt to receive my family's full support.  I never thought I would find myself on a tropical island, or a US territory, but that's where life is taking me.  The fact that I will be working in a small (40,000 people), safe community in a country with no major political strife at the moment makes my family extremely happy.  And I'm very excited by the multiple offers I've had from many many people to come and visit me.  Airfare is pretty cheap to Puerto Rico, and I welcome everyone; even if you sleep on my couch and visit during a week while I'm teaching, I would love to see you all! 

So as my adventure begins, I will use this blog to keep all who care to listen up to date on my travels and experiences.  Come share with me not only the experience of living in a new country, but also the trials and tribulations of a first year teacher.  Join me as I, to use my inspirational little sister's words, "rock that tropical paradise." 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive thing was that as soon as the plane got to al
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and decided that if the team qualified for Glob
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I wil
Read more