Oh crummy crum CRUMBO

ARIEGHOSEIGHGGHGHHH!

I am a numpty!

Numpty (num-p-tee) Dialect, chiefly Scot. ~ n. 1. a bumbling fool; One who is intellectually challenged ("no' the fu' shillin'"). 2. widely known in Scotland as an MSP (Member of Scottish Parliament) [as in "Thae numpties couldnae organise a piss up in a brewery."]

Just got off the phone from an interview for a literacy tutor position in Cape York - that's right, waaaay up north where it's hot all year round...hardly my favourite climatic conditions but the opportunity is a one-off. I've even had to put my school in China off for a week because I want to have this chance. The program is highly successful at rapidly improving the reading level of students who are struggling with literacy. They even offer training in Sydney for a week at the start of January before a 6 month deployment to Cape York...

Buuuuut...at the end of the interview (which actually went well - usually I am terrible at phone interviews - especially the international kind but more on that another day) for some wildly inexplicable reason I TOLD HER I HAD A 3 YEAR OLD! @?!*# Why oh why oh why would I do that? It wasn't planned AT ALL. I haven't mentioned my poor wee girl in an interview for a year: not after my parent status cost me not one but TWO brilliant teacher recruiting jobs earlier in the year. The first one was also a phone interview and I had not intended to mention Miss M, but unfortunately I kept talking about "we" and "us". When she asked who else I travelled with, I would've been better off telling her I was a nutter and liked to talk about myself in the 3rd person, but instead I confessed. She practically hung up on me.

Discriminating on the grounds of being a one parent family or having a child is not allowed, of course, but that's even MORE reason to stay mum until being offered the position. I don't like to be underhand but I prefer to be the one to decide whether or not I will handle a position, or a location, rather than have the decision made by somebody who doesn't know me or who maybe doesn't have children at all!

I honestly have no idea why I said it. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot. Talk about self-destruction...argh! It was like some imp was pulling the words out of my mouth - I started saying it before I even realised what I was saying. I tried to stop but I'd gone too far to backtrack without sounding like I was covering up a terminal illness or a little bit of crazy.

>sigh<

So now we have to wait. This is probably my least favourite part of the job process. Applications are draining and time consuming, waiting to be contacted for interview is nail biting but at least you've not had your hopes raised too high yet. Preparing for interview is stressful but the waiting afterwards is dreadful.

Especially when you may have shot yourself in the foot.

Holy mother of God

I hate cockroaches.

I hate cockroaches.

Jaysus I can barely even get my fingers moving to type...

As soon as it starts warming up in Queensland, these filthy, repulsive, devil-bidden bugs start crawling out of the pits of hell and up our walls...

Not only that, but (for the unitiated), Queensland cockroaches @*!?%# fly...big fluttery, paper scratchy WINGS.

I hate them.

I am almost reduced to tears just typing this, but I have to get it out. We had one in our house the other morning. It was dead (well, lying on it's back by the bathroom door and giving every appearance of being lifeless) but it still managed to wrest a scream from the depths of my soul and turn my legs to jelly.

I am fairly sure I have a cockroach phobia. I have an aversion to all flying insects and most creepy crawlies but the one that reduces me to tears and hysteria like no other is this guy. They are simply gruesome - the murky brown colour, the crunchy shell, the spiky legs, the looooong waving antenna...simply the way they move around the room...and the way they FLY. Why oh why, God? Why do they have to FLY?

Just before my 5th birthday, my first brother was born. It was a hot December morning and somehow I had managed to get him out of his cot without my parents intervening and had take him into the lounge room for a nurse. I was sitting on the edge of the brown couch when I felt something on my leg. Looking down I saw a gruesome beast making it's way up my leg. All I recall after that is my dad coming out (probably in response to my screams) and letting go of my newborn brother.

On another balmy Queensland evening my extended family were out at a resort in Surfers Paradise. Having stuffed ourselves senseless at the buffet the kids and uncles were wandering through the resort pool and gardens. The moment is burned in my memory and I recall that I was wearing my puffy blue and white polka dotted "Shirley Temple" dress. I felt something at my throat. It felt like a scratchy leaf. I reached a hand up to flick it away and instead my hand closed around a flubbering fluttery bloody giant of a cockroach. I screamed, of course.

As her four children started to get older my Mum decided to enclose a section of verandah to create an extra bedroom. It was properly constructed (walls, not curtains) but for some reason the bugs simply refused to relinquish what had previously been open air verandah. On a number of occasions I woke up with something crawling on me. Flicking on the fluro would reveal the hideous brown nighttime visitor. I recall one night that I woke up to a sound and when I switched on the light discovered a cockroach was not even ON me yet - I'd become so paranoid that I could hear the tiny scritch scratch of their spiky feet on the wall.

Since then I've had various other close encounters but I believe these were the ones to really concrete the phobia into my psyche. Whilst at uni I used to phone my old flatmate (Kim) to come over to my new place to remove cockroaches. She'd grown up in PNG so was braver than I - I who would be reduced to a shaking, clammy, sweating mess at the mere THOUGHT that I might have glanced one out of the corner of my eye...

Oh, I had another episode when I lived in one of the last dodgy little duplexes in Mermaid Beach (off Hedges Ave aka Millionaires Row). The screen door had been taken away and the Giant Winged Variety used to make their way in and get comfy. The night before I was due to start work in my first ever REAL teaching job, one flew into my room as I sat up preparing. Now, technically these beasts are not supposed to like the light but this fella was quite keen. I phoned my Mum (she was 2 hours away, it was midnight and NO she would not be coming to kill it) and in the end had to resort to sleeping in the 2nd bedroom (this was before I had a flatmate) which had only an old stinking, double ensemble left over from the previous tenant and a newspaper in it. I squashed the newspaper into every crack and crevice, laid some out on the bed, curled up on top and had a fitful sleep. I was also late to my first day at work.

My fear of the beasts is all consuming. I lose all sense of reason and rationality. From about mid-thigh down I lose feeling. I taste vomit. My hands shake and my palms sweat. There have only been a few (VERY few) rare occasions on which I have not had this physical reaction to a roach sighting and nearly all of those involved me having something to drink first. Last summer one flew in and I ran straight out the door, leaving my 2 year old to defend herself. I could not bring myself to go back into the house.

In Scotland I discovered something magical (and indeed, this may be the primary reason for my enduring love for the bonnie northern land). THERE ARE NO COCKROACHES IN SCOTLAND!!! Okay, so maybe there are some of the pale wee German variety, but those I can handle. It's the big brown winged beasts that send shivers down my spine.

It took about 6 months over there but I finally freed myself from the compulsive habit of entering a room/switching on a light and automatically checking the ceiling, cornice, every corner, edging and floor before entering. I didn't have to throw back my covers before hopping into bed. I could leave my window open WITHOUT A SCREEN!

And now I'm thinking about going back to Scotland via Asia and Europe. I had spoken to a friend who spent time in various places in Asia and she reckoned the roaches weren't that bad, and on this I have put my trust throughout the TESOL journey. Until my Mum started laughing at me yesterday, thinking about me taking on the roaches of Asia. So I sat down and googled, and sure enough, Mum is right. Not only do they have filthy flying bat-like roaches, they even have the German ones. They fly in, they come out of drains...they are in restaurants, in garbage...

My worse nightmare would be to survive the nuclear holocaust - and be the only human survivor...because there would be nobody to call to come kill the critters!

Beast shown is actual size - AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Random Scottish band has the answer

Alright, so I don't know why but somehow I expected finding a job in Asia was going to be fairly straightforward. Sure - there were extra issues such as making sure schools were not dodgy and trying not to head into locations with significant malaria risks or active civil war, but everything I read pointed to the plethora of jobs available, that someone with a B. Ed would be able to pick and choose, that I'd be fighting them off...

Well, in that sense I am fighting them off a wee bit, but that's because none of the jobs I'm being offered seem to FIT.

I don't know why I am surprised. This is the story of my life. Nothing goes according to plan. Nothing fits. Nothing that I actually, specifically HOPE or PLAN for ever seems to come to fruition. Remember that Midas story? Yeah, well at least he had things around him turning to gold. Everything I touch seems to turn to shit. Not that I want that to be my mantra or the motto over my life. Oh no. I don't ACCEPT that everything I start will fail - hell no! It makes me even more determined to succeed! So out I go, again and again, doing the same bloody...

Hang on a minute. Maybe it's BECAUSE I'm doing the same bloody thing?

No, no I'm not. At first I tried to go to Scotland. Then I tried to go to England. I tried every other country in Europe. I investigated Canada. Finally I started looking into the rest of Australia - I tried WA, Tasmania, even went to the NT. New Zealand cropped up from time to time (and again recently) and if I am honest, Scotland has been a constant throughout but has simply faded into the background at times. I started looking at ELT in Europe and now it is Asia.

Okay, so I am trying to do the same thing - get out of this arse of a town, but at least my method is changing! I've looked at studying, I've looked at teaching, I've tried other jobs, I've looked at running a business...Every river I try to cross, every hill I try to climb, every ocean I try to swim, every road I try to find...

Dammit just lost half an hour watching Runrig on youtube! >sigh<> I can't help it. I try not to listen to them, try to avoid any reference to the place because each time I think about it, it breaks my heart again. It kills me not to be there, missing day after day, year after year, the people going about their business, the weather changing...

This is definitely the long way round. I do wonder if I am crazy, thinking that I could possibly be so bold as to believe there was a place for me over there. Miss M is sorted - she's half Scottish so technically has rights. I just have a bunch of ancestors who turned their backs on the place and came...HERE.

Nice move, guys.

Sometimes I do start wondering why I don't give up. Forget about it. The place ain't that great anyway. It rains all the time. Sometimes it's grey for months at a time. There are more wankers per head of population than possibly anywhere, immigration don't want me, Miss M's dad lives there (this is probably the biggest deterrent, damn him) ... and it is just so bloody DIFFICULT to get there. All the hours of my life I have wasted and we are still no closer. And now we are going to go and spend 2 or 3 years traipsing around the earth to try in a sense to come in the back door - and who's to say we won't face a big boot for all our trouble?

It doesn't matter how I reason with myself. The hope won't let go.

Runrig ... again:

like shadows on the wall

you come and you go

through the streets

and the rain that falls down

on our sin

no more good-byes

forever this way

whenever the greatest flame in the world

starts burning

this is our life, and our time

and nothing, is ever going to break us

now we're on our own

always in your eyes

a waking of souls

we gaze out on the road

that brought us up

to this place

the signposts never change

we'll go where they lead

whenever the day to break us comes

we'll not give in

this is our life, and our time

and nothing, is ever going to break us

now we're on our own

this is our place

in our lives

and no one

can ever change this moment

or pull this mountain to the ground

*@!?&*@

Just typed a whole bloody post and suddenly it highlighted itself and promptly disappeared. FFS! As if I'm not p*ssed off enough at the moment without adding to my annoyance - but of course, that is PRECISELY what the Universe prefers to do - wait until we are sweltering in 600 degree heat as this stupid country's stupid summer kicks in, throw in a teacher recruiter who has taken a dislike to me (actually I don't think she ever had any 'like') and a million jobs but once again the ones I am not fussed on are the ones who want me and the jobs I am really keen on are proving elusive...

I think I've blogged already about my recruiter - who wouldn't respond to any of my requests to be put forward for jobs until I contacted another recruiter to ask if there was a problem? Anyway...as soon as I did that she promptly zinged to attention and a dozen interviews were lined up. Then came the realisation that hobnobbing at expat schools would demand at LEAST 2 years of my time. At this point this is not what we want to do. Perhaps in 6 months I will have discovered that we love Asia and want to stay longer etc etc but right now...NO.

So I'm in the pile on the floor again...

Until a brilliant job came through for a school in Japan looking for an early years teacher for only 6 months! Fantastic! But that was a week ago and still no response from them. I found the school online and I am sorely tempted to email them directly as there is something about recruiters. I had another group (workforce on tap or something like that, randomnly based in Bendigo, Victoria) who advertised for ESL teachers. As they were offering 6 month positions I emailed them for more info (there was very little in the ad) and the guy told me they didn't have any but I could ask all the questions I liked of the school when I submitted my CV and they phoned me. I don't like submitting my CV and personal details before I have any info but 6 month contracts are rare, so I did it. Again - no response! What the hell is going on???

The only school that WILL get back to me is in China. Although I am satisfied they aren't dodgy, they are only offering 10000RMB a month - about half what international schools in China were offering me. I kept putting the 6 month contract idea to them but they've ignored it - not only that, they told me they were really looking for someone to stay 18 months. For the love of God, why would I do that when I just gave up the chance to work an 18 month contract at an expat school for 3 times the money and an awesome package???

Which makes me wonder: why did I pass up that school? I didn't want to sign up for 18 months. I can understand schools wanting a longer commitment but surely it can't be that unusual for teachers to want to experience life over there first before committing to long term? And it's not like 6 month contracts are unheard of in western school systems - far from it!

China job has also informed me of their working hours, which are phenomenally high (for teaching). 40 contact hours per week, no planning or prep time (this is supposed to be done while children are sleeping!) for 10000 RMB. One of my hesitations for expat schools was the high demands on time, but at least they stuck to a regular 9 - 3 school day - none of this 8am starting.

In the absence of Japan job getting back to me (which is not a good sign, I'm sure, as other schools got back to me within a day or 2), I'm beginning to wonder if grabbing any old job at a language school might be a better option...

Oh, and I also had a call from a job working with Indigenous kids in remoter parts of Australia wanting to interview. So far I've left a couple of messages but not heard back...

I have a killer headache and I don't know if it's the heat or the stress!

I just want:
a great school: smaller size, flexible, helpful, younger kids,
decent accommodation
enough wages to save a little bit
helpful other staff and friendly kids
short term (at least at first!)

fingers crossed...

Asia

I have never considered going to Asia.

I have cousins who travel there a lot and a few friends and people I met whilst backpacking Europe who love the place. I have friends who grew up there and some who have worked there. When I worked at Movieworld on the Gold Coast during uni I spent quite a few shifts in the infamous ITG (International Tour Groups restaurant). It was more of a wild, chaotic feeding hall than a restaurant. To move the diners along they would drag Wile E Coyote or Tweety or Bugs round to the main door and there would quite literally be a stampede. Staff (including myself) would be pressed up against the walls in terror. I was shouted at by crazy Asians chefs for making the rice taste burnt (eh?) and nearly set on fire trying to hand out Japanese quisine. Once you have scraped the goopy remnants of corn soup from 150 tables for 3 days in a row...well, that's about all I ever wanted to see of Asia.


However...


If you have been reading any of this and not just scrolling through to look at the pictures you will know that an Turas - the Journey - is all about returning to Scotland. After nearly 4 years of trying in vain to get back there directly from Australia I realised it was going to take a more creative approach. It was then I decided to follow my mate Ewan's advice (pictured - teehee :-) and take the long way round. Hey, I've always thought Mongolia would be fascinating.


The original plan was to head to Europe to teach English. I started a Tesol course to facilitate this and it was during this stage that I kept coming across references to Asia and encouragement from other English teachers to try it.


When my recruiter (finally!) started responding to my emails last week, every single job was for China...so now we are looking at Asia as a definite plan. I don't want to spend more than a year there as I am looking at 2 years in Europe before heading back to Scotland...and I would dearly love to be in Scotland before I am 30. And before Miss M is too far into her schooling to be disqualified from Gaelic classes.


But China? China! My family are horrified. Even my GP was distressed, and advised me to head to Mongolia instead (as he handed me 2 pages of vaccinations recommended for Aussies travelling to China!!!!!!)

Early Childhood

Some of you may be wondering what a Secondary teacher is doing dreaming of teaching letters and numbers to tiny tots...you were? Great!

I've never really been convinced that I 'belong' teaching a particular age group. Sometimes I think all those years of organising my siblings and cousins into playing schools was more about me as an organiser or manager than about me as a teacher.

I always looked over the shoulder of my primary colleagues with great envy whilst at uni. I was GREAT at handwriting - I wanted to do a whole semester on handwriting! Making a model of a volcano? I wanted to do that! Learning the guitar? Are you serious? I have a dusty guitar lying in the corner of my room right now! And they get to do ART! Argh! My 3rd year (primary) flatmates in my 1st year thought I was nuts doing secondary when clearly I was born to be a primary teacher. But I seemed to get along with the other "secondaries" so much better than with the "primaries", and I was fascinated by the History component of the course - sometimes even by the English lectures.

I remember being close to tears on my first prac when Katherine was practicing her lesson in preparation for lecturer assessment visits (the principal of the college was coming to do ours). I was teaching Ancient Egyptian genealogy to Year 12s I'd never met and she was teaching the letter B to a class of year 1st who adored her.

When I travelled to Scotland I felt even more strongly about teaching primary and it was part of the reason I allowed myself to be convinced to move to London - the supply teaching agency would allow me to work in Primary schools. It was interesting and infinitely preferrable to supply teaching in London Secondaries, and I had a couple of job offers, but Scotland drew me back. Up north it was hard enough trying to get a job in my own subject areas, let alone branch into something new. The GTCS see to it that all teachers remain rigidly in the areas they trained in in their early 20s when they didn't know better.

I love History. The only job I've ever enjoyed was teaching History in Stornoway. I've thought about working in museums or in heritage, but in Australia at least, I'd need further study and history teaching experience - impossible as they've squished my beloved subject into SOSE so it is no longer recognisable.

Then along comes my own preschooler, and a short contract with a local prep/1/2 class and I start wondering again...

So this is the age group I am hoping to work with whilst teaching English. I will miss the teenagers...sometimes.

Holes in your nose

Miss M got this book out of the library last week:

It is quite mind bending to read but she is fascinated by it. When I noticed the Japanese name on the cover it got me wondering whether or not it was related to the book "Everyone Poops" that I remember Rove having on his show a few years ago.

Sure enough:

http://beeskneesbooks.blogspot.com/2008/02/boogers.html

If I am struggling to spend time with Miss M now, how will I cope when I am working 8 til 6 (possibly) 5 days a week, in a foreign country? On one hand I know it will make the time we do have together more precious as it will be the only time we have. We will also be alone and probably won't have TV (or at least, won't be able to understand any of it!). We will hopefully have the chance to do lots of wee trips together.

I am also hopeful for a job where she will be allowed to attend the school. Some stories I've read of more rural schools seem to paint a more flexible picture. I've also found an advertisement for a part-time toddler room job. Mornings only. Naturally working part-time might mean we can't afford to live (especially when I am supporting a child as well) but at the same time I have discovered the variances in pay between international/expat style schools and more local schools. The latter advertise salaries about 50% of what they are offering in the expat schools. Not all the expat schools are exactly that - some of them cater for local students but simply follow an international curriculum.

At the moment it looks like the going rate in China (this is for a fully qualified teacher) is around RMB 10 000 in local schools or early childhood centres and RMB 20 000 in International schools. So feasibly, a part-time role in an International school would be a brilliant stroke of luck. On top of earning the same as someone in a language school, I would also expect to have accommodation and airfares included, as well as visas, medical, tuition and et cetera.

The job is through one of the larger recruiters who send me out job mailers all the time yet cannot find the time to respond to my emails, so I am going to have to bombard them. There's a whole other post in that...

To come full circle, while Miss M is currently engrossed in nose picking and boogers, Mummy is currently reading 'Eat, Pray, Love' which has such widespread rave reviews that I couldn't help but purchase it (especially as it was 50% off). I am about a 6th of the way through and although the writing is great, it is a little irritating and I am worried that I might end up putting it in the crap book pile. I hope not. Even Julia Roberts and Oprah have bought copies for their friends.