In the Beginning....

Our Agoura House

In the Beginning...

After 24 years of teaching in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles), why would we leave beautiful suburbia and travel south of the border? The answer is not a simple one. It was a difficult decision to leave family and friends. But, we figured, this would only be for a year or so. We took the plunge to go overseas to experience a new culture.

The One-Year Plan

It was time to get out of suburbia and go exploring--something my wife Diane and I have wanted to do since we visited Australia in 1992 and met teachers who swapped houses and jobs. The thinking was: I would teach, she would be a high school college counselor or event planner, and my son Gavin would go to an international school. When we talked to our friends, it seemed that everyone knew someone who had taught overseas and loved it. Our friends who learned about our plans either said one of two things: "You're crazy," or "Wow, what an amazing adventure." Most mentioned the last one. 

Recruiting Services

We googled everything about international teaching and kept finding the same sites recurring: Search Associates and TIE. We called both recruiters and found there were amazing jobs all over the world. Yes, Search Associates cost a lot of money (about $400) but the resources were deep: detailed descriptions of schools, international job fairs, personal contacts with international educators, blogs, etc. TIE was a little more limited(about $29) and just listed schools with descriptions. After getting our coffee, my wife and I looked at both sites almost daily. We applied everywhere, except certain repressive Middle East and Eastern European countries. Yes, there were (and are) listings for Afghanistan and Lebanon. 

                                                                    

Eventually, I received Skype interviews from Brazil and Poland. But they had someone else in mind, apparently, and did not hire me. Their loss, we figured.

From Beijing to Cambodia to Mexico

Unhealthful--even for Los Angeles

I was subsequently seriously examined by schools in Beijing and then hired by a Canadian School in Wuhan, China. But after consulting with our doctor, we concluded that living in China for a year would be detrimental to our health, with the air pollution off the scale, and we turned it down. If you think Los Angeles has bad pollution, living in Wuhan would be like walking into a toxic chimney everyday. Not only was the air polluted, but reports are that the "fresh vegetables" in China are also harvested with contaminated soil--at least in that area. Yikes.

Neighborhood of Cambodian school--not Agoura!

I also received an offer at a small school in Cambodia, but after looking at Google Maps, I found the thriving city of Phnom Penh would be a very difficult transition, with its dire poverty. Yes, it has beautiful temples downtown, but that is not where the school was located. I couldn't imagine Gavin walking to the local mall and getting a Slurpee. It was just too different for the first time experience.

Out of the Blue (Azul)...

By May, we had given up and contemplated applying for 2017. Then, out of the blue, my wife received an email in June from Teachers-Latin-America, stating there was a job in Queretaro, Mexico and asked whether she was still interested. After a series of short Skype interviews, she was hired as a high school college counselor. Our recruiter, Guy, told us it would be simple for me to find a job in Queretaro and gave insight into the city and the schools.


We knew little about Mexico, and even less about teaching there:

it was time to start packing up our entire house, find renters, sell our 3 cars, get work visas, buy plane tickets and move onto Mexico for at least one year.