A Couple weeks of Applications

This past week was spent mostly working out what I will be doing as of April, as my current contract expires at the end of March. I love my current school more and more each week, but I'm also less keen on the company after every monthly meeting. In case I haven't clarified before, I am a dispatch worker, which means I work for a company that the Mito Board of Education contracts to find ALT's for its schools. So, I work at a school for this company, an arrangement I'm not particularly fond of, hence my recent applications to other places.

I suppose I should start off with the interview I had Saturday before last. It was in Yamanashi Prefecture just south of Kofu the prefecture's capital. The company is an Eikaiwa School (English Conversation School. Amelia works at one of these). they're usually places where parents take their preschool and elementary school children for English exposure and some junior high kids whose parents want them to get a leg up on the competition for high school entrance exams. This particular school is very small (only around 90 students) and is operated by a couple in their late 40's or early 50's. They were extremely nice and are apparently losing 4 of their 5 current foreign (native English) teachers in April, as their contracts are up and they're headed for their respective homes. Anyway, the interview went well and I need to wait for them to figure out what they'll have available they are growing considering expanding their operation, so they said they'd get back to me when they knew if they were offering a part or a full time position.

Another adventure I had this week was trying to write a Japanese resume. To balance the difficulty of it being Japanese, the format for a resume here is standardized so it's harder to go wrong. Also, one thing I really liked about it was the absence of trying to make your job sound more impressive than they truly were. You just put the position, company, and dates and save the self aggrandizing for the interview. I sent that in to two Boards of Education that do direct hiring which I hope will help me avoid repeating my current situation.

So this leaves me waiting to hear from half a dozen people. As for this weekend, I will be visiting Amelia in Nagoya, so that should be fun. Other than that, not much news to report. I'll keep you posted as things develop so I should hear back from people over the next few weeks. Until next time.