First Interview

So I know I haven't posted in a while. I would be lying if I said it had nothing to do with the fact that we had not gotten jobs yet. We have been kind of lazy looking for jobs. We have visited only two schools. The first was Assumption College, a private Catholic school with no positions open, but they were very friendly. The second was Anabon. Anabon is the school in the city that educates the highest class people of Ubon. The "movers and the shakers" of Ubon send their kids there. I think it is a government school. Foreign teachers have 17 hours of work a week (though they stay on the school grounds a lot longer). They also get free lunches.

Anabon is a school in the middle of town, and rather close to us. (This is good since some of the other "good schools" are 15km outside of town, which would not be the best or safest drive by motorbike as a commute.) It is across the street from the park, two blocks from the main road. It is a very short walk from the main night market area. It is a very nice school with many foreign teachers and a great pay to boot. 31000B/month ($1033/month). We are ready to settle for 25000B if we have to, so this seemed like a relatively ideal situation. The people are nice. The grounds are welcoming. The turnover is not bad. The benefits are pretty good.

We heard that Anabon was hiring when we first got here, but we did not act on it until yesterday, Monday. It was at that point that we visited on a contact that we received and handed in our resumes, copies of our TEFL certificates, copies of our diplomas. They set up an interview for this morning, Tuesday morning. They said that they would be taking one of us almost certainly. They had one vacancy. I interviewed first. It took an hour and a half. Very taxing. Sarah felt like her interview was an interrogation. Then we went in front of a class for five minutes each for reasons I don't totally understand.

Then when we were saying goodbye. They said they would call us that afternoon and tell us which of us was hired or whether it was neither of us. This was a marked tone difference for me because before it seemed like it was a sure thing before that one of us would get it. Sarah told me soon after that that they asked her where we took our TEFL class and she told them it was online. She said that is when they stopped saying "when we take one of the two of you" and started saying "whether we take one of you or neither of you." So we sat in Peppers and discussed how it was pretty clear we would be lucky to get one offer, and how it felt like we turned a sure thing into a not-so-sure thing. I felt like it was such a failure.

While we were in Pepper's, lamenting our lost opportunity discussing how we actually didn't want the job anyway, the school called. I picked up the phone but they wanted to talk to Sarah first. Sarah stood outside Pepper's while I waited for our formal rejection. I spoke to John for a long time, the owner of Pepper's. I realize I was being a little bit rude since a group of policemen had just arrived and he needed to be very attentive to them since they hold such a strong a powerful status in Thai society. Sarah came back it and told me the news.

They were offering both of us jobs. They wanted us to start tomorrow.

I was in total shock and disbelief. I thought maybe she had heard them wrong. I asked John whether we should take the jobs (without checking out other schools). They wanted a response today. John is the most connected and knowledgeable person in Ubon, and his opinion is probably the best of anyone's. John said that it was one of the better schools and that if they were giving that kind of offer than we should take it. He said that he's heard nothing but good things about Anabon. Neither had we and we had heard some bad things about pretty much every school.

I was very skeptical. Is there some catch? What's going on here? But as we thought about it and inquired, it seemed like we were nothing less than very lucky. We did try to visit another school, but our decision was pretty much made.

We called with our acceptance and they asked us to come in for some visa paperwork. We were introduced to EVERYONE. Every foreigner and every Thai in the foreign office. Altogether probably 20 people. Everyone was warm and kind, like they were greeting long lost friends. We now have desks, a class, mentors, a salary. More than we could ever ask for.