The Interview

It feels like Brad and I packed about 1 week into 2 days this last weekend. Sorry its taken so long to update!

First we had an interview in Gyoda City on Saturday morning so we had to get up early to leave by 7 to make our 11am interview. (The trains are convenient, but it still takes awhile.) The first part of the trip was no problem since we had started getting used to how the train stations worked and JR (the main train line) has English signs to help you out. However, the last leg of our journey to Gyoda City was with a different company that didn't have any English anywhere so luckily Brad knows some Japanese and was able to hold a broken English/Japanese conversation with one of the workers to get us where we needed to go. I would like to add that we were dressed up in our suits and nice shoes (flats for me!) and it was freezing and windy out! We tried to navigate our way through the city with the map that the interviewer gave us and ended up standing right outside of where we needed to go asking somebody for help and they had no idea where the school was. (Its actually a night school in a rented house and the sign was hidden by a door.) So we ended up wandering around to either find the school or a pay phone. We finally found a pay phone right about the time I thought I was going to lose my feet due to frost bite.

They took us back to where we were standing about 30 minutes earlier and one of the women conducting the interview said, "Oh, I saw you standing outside a little while ago. I thought you had just finished the interview". I should mention that these are all very nice people but it was definitely one of the most unorganized interviews I have ever been too. It went well though and we have been in contact with the recruiter and have a follow up interview on the 22nd with a board of education. This is a smaller recruiting school so they have to compete for contracts from boards of education with bigger recruiting companies, so they aren't sure how many teachers they need yet.

Brad and I are keeping in touch with them as well as pursuing other job positions as well. We had one Skype interview today, we have one tomorrow, and another interview next week. It seems that now that we have gotten all of our resume's out we're having trouble keeping up with all the emails from potential employers!

We made it back safely, but not before I stopped at a hundred yen store to by some socks for my feet! And I'm not sure if they warmed up until about midnight that night!

K