The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Well, it has been a busy 2 weeks since we returned to school. The children came back on January 7th, and were around for 3 days before the weekend. Last Saturday to Tuesday I attended the Bangkok Search Associates job fair. It was a wild, wild experience. There were about 350 very qualified teachers (not quite sure how I got an invite...) trying to impress, smooze, and bribe their way into around 85 different international schools from around the world. I'm not sure if any of you have been to a job fair like this before but let me tell you, it is quite an experience. Firstly, you have about 60-90 seconds to impress the recruiters enough for them to give you an interview. Then, if this is successful, you get to have 1 or more interviews with them, where they may grill you on pedagogy, or just talk about their school for a half hour (the latter is my favourite type of interview.) Due to my stunning good looks, I secured 6 interviews with schools from Cambodia, China, Germany, Korea, Kuwait, Laos, and Switzerland. Switzerland, Germany, and Korea shot me down, but Cambodia, Laos, Kuwait, and China all offered me jobs.

So...the good: I accepted a job at the International School of Phnom Penh. I'm pretty excited, as are they (by the sounds of it.) It will be a great career move - once I have had IB training and experience I will be able to write my own ticket to anywhere in the world. (I'm not being cocky, I'm very modest actually, there just aren't a lot of chemists teaching internationally. It's great for me.) It will also be a pretty exciting adventure. Cambodia is about 20 years behind Thailand, as far as development goes - Pol Pot helped them lose that race - so it is a very frentic, developing place to be.

The bad: I will have to leave Bangkok in the summer sometime. That means all you people that want to come and visit, do it soon. Otherwise you will have to come to Cambodia. Jess will still be here for next year though so if you are nice, she might let you sleep on our futon.

The ugly: There really is no ugly...yet. Life is good right now. Work, Eat, Sleep, Tiger Woods '09, go out on the weekend...what more can you ask for.

Come visit while you can!