Our days consisted of waking up, applying to jobs, wandering Thonburi for something to eat, checking gmail for threatening emails from Phillip, eating a thimbleful of peanut butter, going to sleep, repeat.
After a couple of days of searching, Chelsea and I were talking to a placement agency, and when asked when we would be able to start, Chelsea responded "ASAP!", while I am trying to telepathically tell her to shut up.
"Oh wonderful! We actually have a school that needs two teachers to start tomorrow!"
Goooooood.
We get dressed in interview attire in 100 degree heat and after wandering the streets of Thailand looking for this school, slowly melting to death, some nice Thai man took pity on us and put us on the back of a moto taxi and off we go (not an easy feat to ride a moto while in a skirt).
Don't we look happy?? Little did we know we were about to enter into the worst interview of our entire lives thus far. When we walk into the school we are led to a waiting area where we are placed onto a couch for about 20 minutes. When someone finally acknowledges us, we are taken into a back room with a Turkish man who speaks little to no English, and after looking at my resume for about 15 minutes (in dead silence) he finally informs me I will start tomorrow. Excuse me sir but 1) What classes am I going to teach? 2) What are your school hours? 3) What grade will I be teaching? 4) Do you have textbooks? 5) How much am I going to be paid? 6) Is this you formally offering me the job?
7) Can I have a tour of the school? 8) Do you even know my name?
After telling him I would need at least a day to think it over (not fully sure if he understood me), I walked back into the "waiting area" and tried to signal to Chelsea with my eyes that we need to leave now.
After another 20 minutes I am told my interviewer is summoning me. I walk into the room where the interviewer tells me to tell Chelsea that I have accepted the job. Now we have to explain to this man that no, I have not accepted the job (was it even offered to me??) and in fact will not be starting tomorrow. Interesting that I majored in Communication yet this man has no idea what I am saying. Lots of hand motions. Anyway. We got a "tour" of the school where we walked into the classrooms and the children were literal zombies sitting at their desks while a movie played, and the teachers were all on their phones. Every single class was like that. The kids couldn't even say hello in English. No thanks. We hightailed it out of there, telling them we would "think about it".
A few days later we had another interview at a Christian school. This school seemed much nicer, but since it was still summer break we didn't get a chance to see the students. Emily went first. TWO HOURS LATER she emerged from the room. Next was my turn. AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER it was over. I would say it was generally pretty normal except for the part where my interviewer asked me what I would do if a student drew a picture of himself and said, "Look, that's me smoking crack!"
Apparently he did not like my answer because I did not get offered the job. God bless. Chelsea did indeed get offered the job but naturally she declined because she would have been babysitting teaching 2-3 year olds.
Next interview. I actually wouldn't even call it an interview, more like they looked at mine and Chelsea's pictures resumes and offered us the job because we have blonde hair (this is not an exaggeration). We went out to the school which turned out to be MASSIVE. It was very nice and there was free breakfast/coffee (BIG pro...we almost accepted right on the spot) but one of us would have had to teach 7-9th grade and one of us would have had to teach 3rd-5th grade. There is arguably nothing worse than 7th-9th graders. Body odor. Braces. Acne.
^8th grade graduation. Peep that dress and that hairdo that I spent 3 hours at a salon for, to end up looking like Shirley Temple. I thought I was hot shit. And those cap sleeves?! Fashion forward.
While we were deliberating on that school, we got a different offer from a placement agency that contacted us. We went out to look at the school and right when Chelsea and I walked in we knew this was it (funny thinking back on that moment when I was in love with the school, as I write this blog post 2 months later...).
^pure joy...
We decided to decline the previous school's offer and that is how we ended up at Anubaan Nonthaburi! We came home to tell Emily about it and she eventually signed with the same school as us, as well as another girl, Nicole, who we met through Language Corps (trend setters).
After living in a hostel for 13 days we were finally employed and ready to find a place to live! Which is an entirely different long and drawn out story and one that I don't feel like telling.
St. Mark's #blessed.
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