"R" day has arrived for us. For Nonie it was June 27th and for myself June 30th. My last day at work was very surreal. Actually the whole week. One moment I was grinning ear to ear and then terrified the next. But no more looking back, it is a done deal. Turned in my keys and cards. I walked out the door at 6:30, it closed behind me and thus ended a facility career of 35 years. I not sure what I expected to happen, perhaps some orchestral music playing in the background, the sun setting in the distance and all my family and friends waiting for me as I left. Whoops, wrong dream, that one is for when I die. I guess carrying a box full of office crap down Main St. is a good an ending as I will get.
Nonie's retirement party took the form of a group teacher dinner where all the retirees from the various schools were feted at the same time. Very nice. It seems that Nonie is the first TOC to actually retire from the district. They actually did not know what to do with her. It seems that the union provides some dough for each year of work upon retirement. The word out for Nonie, since she did not work full time, they were going to prorate the amount but in the end she received the full amount. No one can say Nonie did not work full time in her professional career as a TOC. We were joined at the dinner by a number of Nonie's TOC peers with Nonie's best buddy Jeannie giving a small speech about Nonie. Very nice. Nonie was unaware that she would have some time to speak so her speach was short and sweet. A nice ending to a 30 year career, with a small break to raise two great kids. My party is yet to come. Food for another blog.
Career Part Deux. With a single stroke of a finger, we sent out 12 resumes to different schools in Harbin. The amazing thing about it, was we got at least 20 responses and more continue to come. Not sure how that happened. It has been an eye opener for us with some interesting interviews, conversations and e-mails. We have accepted a position to teach English at the Harbin Institute of Technology. It is a high tech university with over 40,000 students. en.hit.edu.cn/about/profile.htm#
Check out the school at this website. Our inital thoughts when starting out was to teach kids. What drew us to teaching in a university was the excellent time off. We would have between five and 6 weeks off between semesters. Sweet. Gives us plenty of time to get back to see the grandchild or perhaps the grandchildren with some bonus travel time in between. Money is a little less but money was never the issue.
If all goes well and we embrace this lifestye, our plan is for at least two years in China. This will give us solid resumes as English Teachers. The average life expectancy of a ESL teacher is one year so our two years puts us right up there in the senior teacher category. We can then start to look around at other countries and continue to do this till it sucks. We have several documents to fill out, medical checkup and criminal record check to be done and sent off. Then the visa process to go through and if all goes according to plan we will leave for Harbin around the 25th of August.
We start our mandarin lessons in earnest this week.
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