The Job Search

Just a word of thanks to everyone from home who has been encouraging us this past week - your sense of perspective really helps! Typically, being in a foreign country always feels like a whirlwind at first. We've been going through the always-anticipated and ever-unavoidable culture shock all while living on a ridiculous budget and trying to turn our rapidly dwindling savings into paychecks. That's not to say that we haven't been falling in love with Chiang Mai, and more broadly, Thailand. It's difficult not to love delicious street food for under a dollar, scooter rentals for under ten, and opportunities to schmooze with elephants and tigers just a tuk-tuk trip away. We're so excited to be able to indulge in all of that once the dust settles! Still, a month happens in a week, and it's easy to feel defeated. Sometimes it's nice to sit down and give each other a pep talk. Here's a typical conversation:

Aire: We've been to so many places! None of them want us! What's wrong with us?!
Julia: Dude. We've been doing this for 4 days. If we were unsuccessful in a 4 day job hunt in America, would we consider ourselves failures?
Aire: Okay true. You're right.

ten minutes later

Julia: Is it our pictures? Should we take better pictures? What if we don't make enough and our lives are miserable? What if we're not good teachers?

This takes up about ten minutes of our day. The rest is replete with emailing, calling, and visiting schools within a 15km radius. If you were wondering what it's like to land cold in Thailand and try to find a job from nothing, don't worry - I'll let you know in gruesome detail. Let me prelude this by emphasizing that Thailand is run quite efficiently and all mishaps and misfortunes are entirely due to our tight budget and inexperience. Oh, and the heat. Actually, mostly the heat.

On pavement pounding outings, we like to come as prepared as possible so we can be in and out of schools. We print about 10 copies of everything we need for applications, which tends to be anything from just a CV to a CV, cover letter, picture, copy of diploma, copy of TEFL degree, copy of passport, copy of visa, and official transcripts. We put each little packet in a folder and have one prepared for each school. Upon arriving, we get mixed responses - anything from confusion, sitting around waiting for an English speaker, an impromptu interview, or a formal application sheet. Where the fun really lies is in renting a scooter for these trips. Unfortunately, though, compared to America, Thailand is extremely appearance conscious. Wrinkles, mismatching outfits, or a hair out of place can cost you the job. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Thailand we realized that the heat and swelling made all of our shoes too small and extremely uncomfortable. Unfortunately, when in Thailand the lining of skirts and blazers very much restrict walking ability, not to mention capacity to scooter. Fortunately, Ariel and I are not too easily discouraged. Our first day out, after scootering to my first interview sitting sideways on the bike as cars whizzed by on what is termed the "superhighway", clinging to Ariel for dear life with one hand while directing her using google maps with the other (+1 for iPhones in foreign countries), we decided it was probably best to perfect this whole deal. The next day, we walked/scootered around in blouses,shorts, and tevas. When we neared a school, we located a well-positioned pay phone and sneakily slipped on our pencil skirts over our shorts and quickly changed shoes. It gave us a certain sense of satisfaction to know that we were wearing shorts under our skirts. Probably comparable to the "imagine everyone in the audience in underwear" tactic. While still exhausting, it got the job done. We didn't die on our motorbike, we didn't worsen our blisters, and we looked pretty darn classy.  

Long story short, after calling and emailing 25 schools and applying in person to a dozen of the most promising, we had little to show for it - one interview that was too low paid for the distance, long hours, and the meh vibe I had about this bougie, pretentious school for upper class Thai kids, one interview for part-time, far-away work, and 4 schools that may or may not have full or part time work and may or may not have responded to our application. We were getting pretty discouraged. But then, on Saturday, after spending the previous day researching the plethora of well paying jobs in Bangkok, we finally had a win! We received a call from a school we had dropped into the day before, saying they had one job opening and maybe two. As of today, we have visited two of the school's locations, observed the classes we will be teaching, submitted our documents for a work permit, and looked over our contracts! The school is new and looks great. There are other farang teachers who were friendly and even able to give us advice on what salary to negotiate. And, because it's a Christian school, we even get a week off for Christmas! Amazingly, after our unrelenting search and plenty of feelings of hopelessness, we seem to have a found a job for both of us, located near where we want to live and paying what we expected. All that's left to do is a demonstration lesson on Wednesday, which seems to be more of a technicality than a weeding out process. It's been crazy not knowing whether or not we're going to stay in Chiang Mai or move back to Bangkok. The cognitive dissonance is ridiculous! We went from trying to talk up Bangkok and downplay Chiang Mai to the other way about and now our minds are just a bit frazzled.

On an only slightly related note, it's very strange taking my resume really seriously for the first time. I had never thought of the things I had done in the past, be it work or volunteer trips/jobs, as resume builders. So it's bizarre being asked if I have teaching experience and realizing that, unintentionally, I do. I'm actually fairly qualified from their perspective, and all from things that I did purely for the enjoyment of it and put on my resume as an afterthought. It's nice to see how life can sort of line up like that, and I hope I can be lucky enough for that kind of thing to carry me through the future. Keep doing what you love, I guess.

A nice thing about this process is that despite the heat and lack of money, applying for the same jobs, sharing all the same food, and being around each other non-stop, Aire and I are still definitely each other's rock. As always, one of us is always around to be positive when the other is feeling cynical. It's great to have someone pump you up for interviews and treat you to a 50 cent fresh orange juice (a generous 20% of our typical food budget for the day) just because you managed to not make a fool of yourself that day. I probably couldn't do all this without her, and it would absolutely not be fun.

Speaking of food budgets, the weekend night markets around Chiang Mai are by far our favorite part of the city so far (which is not exactly fair, considering it is one of the few things we have done because they're technically free. But still). The Sunday night one is the best, starting just down the road from our guest house and continuing for a good mile. Fantastic, unique stalls abound - there are delicious fresh waffles, quail eggs, jelly drinks, noodle dishes, grilled insects, and more! Naturally there are also loads of boutique-y items, as well as some things that are actually pretty tasteful and/or useful. It's fun to see what we think are the best stalls - that is, the ones that seem to have a genuinely cool idea that corners the market in some way. That's always my favorite thing to do at farmer's markets at home, and the concept is similar here. It's fun to try to think of your own idea. Here's a start: don't be the old lady who is only selling plain wooden combs. Be the guy who has a line of people clammering after his fresh waffles full of chocolate or nuts or bananas or pork or all of the above. Yesterday, we were feeling good about our interview that morning so we decided to treat ourselves to the extraneous food items we have yet to allow ourselves. We bought everything that looked really good and came out stuffed and satisfied, if not a bit sad about how far behind budget our splurge would place us. After counting it all up, we realized we had spent $2.75 between the two of us. Again, we had failed at splurging. PS. Come visit us in Chiang Mai. And come on a weekend. Dinner's on us!