Saturday, August 21, 2010

The adventure is not over yet

Wow, where has the last 4 months gone? I can't believe it's been so long. The other night I rented "Julie & Julia", which I hadn't see before (cute movie) and it made me realize that I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping up my blog (and I could relate to Julie's blogging quest, and wondering if anybody even reads this anymore).

I started this blog when I began my Peace Corps adventure in Macedonia, which was quite exciting. Now, for the last two years I've been trying to find a teaching job in a tough economy, which has not been very exciting, and to tell the truth, pretty depressing. A few months ago the New York Times came out with an article that stated that it is as difficult nowadays to get a teaching job as it was in the Great Depression. I believe it!

As for my job at the Catholic School, I learned later that I was one out of 400 applications for 3rd & 4th grade position. One job and 400 people applied for it. Yikes! Well, unfortunately, I did not get the job, which totally floored me. I worked my butt off at that school and sacrificed many hours and much of my personal life to do the best flipping job that I could. The staff liked me, the students liked me and the majority of the parents liked me and I was doing an excellent job, so why wouldn't they hire me back? I already had plans to get my own apartment up in Everett, my career was finally taking off! Well, my deepest fear came true. They did not hire me because I am not Catholic. It is a small school and they really need teachers who can teach Religion. My principal told me that she "would hire me back in a second", but they needed Catholic teachers. Now, I'm not bitter or anything, but out of 400 applicants, they ended up hiring a gal who is about 22 years old and straight out of Graduate School and only 5 months of subbing experience under her belt. However, she is Catholic, so she got the job. Did I mention that I'm not bitter?

So, here I am now back in the subbing pool, still looking for a job. I'm just about ready to throw the towel in and start applying at restaurants and retail stores, in order to find a job with regular hours and a steady income. But even those jobs are hard to come by. I can't even qualify for unemployment, it's pathetic.

On the bright side, I have completely enjoyed having the summer off not working. I went to San Antonio, TX to visit friends, visited my sister, brother-in-law and cutest nephew in the world in Indiana for a week and then went to Cannon Beach, OR for a little vacation and R & R.

School starts up soon and subbing jobs will probably start creeping up around October. I have such mixed feelings about returning to subbing.

My long term plan is to pursue a job in International teaching. The sky is the limit to where I could go, but I am feeling an urge to return to South America (I could regain my Spanish skills!). Argentina sounds fantastic...

The adventure is not over yet.