Tuesday, April 20

So you remember how I ended yesterday's blog post all, I guess I have to leave things on the job front uncertain for tonight? And then blithely published my post?

Well HAHAHAHAHA little I did I know I'd get a phone call from the agency at 8:30pm, just after I finished that post. A very nice British man asked me to prepare a 15-minute demo teaching lesson on the past simple tense, to be given over Zoom to a number of teachers from the hiring school at 10:00am the following day.

That gave me 13½ hours to prepare, and I planned on spending at least 8 of those hours sleeping.

Well, the fact that Roman and I had been working on improving his lesson over the course of the day, and the fact that I really didn't have time to second-guess myself meant I was able to churn something out pretty quickly. I spent the next hour or so pulling together a quick lesson and powerpoint, and then had a couple hours in the morning to make some changes to the powerpoint and fuss around with the technical details, in an attempt to not make a total fool of myself over Zoom—which, up to this point, I had only used for phone conversations, as I haven't worked an office job in years.

I was done with the powerpoint and dressed in conservative interview clothes by 9:00am. Around 9:15am, I ran through my lesson on Zoom with Stuart, the British guy who runs the agency, and at 10:00am, I got onto Zoom to do my lesson.

I think it went well. The lesson was straightforward and not super exciting but, well, I didn't have much time and it was a grammar lesson and it was over Zoom. But I felt pretty comfortable and at ease. The interview portion was very short—one teacher asked me a few questions, but I didn't have a chance to ask any questions myself—the meeting started five minutes late because we were waiting on one teacher, and I think they were all watching the clock to make sure they had some time to chat without me before the free 40-minute Zoom meeting ended. Which was a little odd—but if they do offer me a job, I will try and find out more about the school.

The only thing I really regret is the very end of the meeting. I was made the host of the meeting on Zoom so I could share the slideshow and I'm pretty sure I accidentally selected “end the meeting for everyone” when I left (and they were clearly getting ready to chat about me), which I felt pretty embarrassed about.

Meanwhile, Roman had his own job-seeking adventures. While he was waiting at the agency for his teaching demonstration to begin, he heard a giant BOOM outside. It was so loud he thought it was a bomb—but it was in fact an electrical transformer exploding. It killed all the power in the area, and for a little while they were all locked inside the building.

But the agency got the power back up, and Roman did his teaching demo and the interview. He was super prepared and it sounds like he aced it—they told him at the interview that he'd been added to the roster and they'd be sending him job postings shortly.

On his way home, Roman brought us lunch—bao buns, meat on skewers, shumai, and sticky rice. Delicious!

I feel like we're in a bit of weird holding pattern while we're actively searching for jobs—you just never know when you're going to get a call asking you to prepare a teaching demonstration in 13½ hours! With that in mind, and because we were both a bit wrung-out, we spent the afternoon relaxing, playing guitar (Roman) and reading (me).

I neglected to get a picture of my dinner, but I had papaya salad, sticky rice, and grilled chicken.

In the early evening, I heard back from another one of the schools I applied to last week—they asked me to prepare a 20-minute teaching demo for secondary students (so, like, 12 and up?) on any topic, for a Zoom demo/interview on Friday. Which now feels like a shocking amount of time to prepare!