SO, TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF.

Between two weeks and a week before we made the trip down to Costa Rica, Brett and I sent out our resumes and cover letters to nearly 30 different schools. Our emails included a message saying that we were interested in teaching English and that we would be in the country on the 4^th. Being that it was Christmas break for most schools, I didn’t hear anything back until we were down there. Brett, however, did hear back from the Washington School and was offered an interview on the 6th! The peak hiring season here for ESL teachers is January to early February, so we were feeling confident that we would hear SOMETHING once the break was over.

As I said in my last post, I was offered an interview the day after we arrived there (January 5^th) and Brett’s was for the following day. We woke up extra early to give us some buffer time with trying to find the school in the foreign city. I put on a dress and Brett put on his tie. Andrés, the one man at the desk in our hostel, said we look “muy elegante” as we passed him on our way to the door. With the local map in hand, we headed to our first interview.

Our 30 minute walk was a little less than elegant. We probably could have caught a bus, somewhere, but we had no clue what bus we would take. Getting specific directions down here is impossible. For example, the address for point A might be something like the following: Point A is 800 meters west of point B. Okay, great! Where is point B? Point B is 30 meters north of point C.  Ugh.  Brett and I are bad enough with directions as it is. Actually, I will say that Brett did a fantastic job at navigating the map; I was thankful for that. Even when we did get lost (those stories to come later), I felt confident that he could at least get us back to where we started. Good job, honey. J

Being our first full day in the country, we didn’t realize that there was a main road for people to walk through, just a few streets up. Instead, we walked through streets with tiny, uneven sidewalks and a lot of realllllly terrible smells. There were little shops set up that sold fish and there was garbage everywhere. Blah. When I say the smells were reallllly bad, I mean we were holding our breath and still had the urge to vomit. So bad. It was mainly that one street so once we passed through it, we could breathe again.

Right before that, though, we were walking on a normal sized sidewalk and there was a big cardboard box pushed against the wall. As we got closer, we saw some toes, ankles, and knees sticking out of this box!  I expected to see homeless people here – it’s a big city. What I didn’t expect was to see a man laying stick straight on his back with his feet together. Brett’s and my first thought was that he was dead and that someone covered up his face with the box. Thinking we just stepped over a corpse,  Brett grabbed my hand and ran down the sidewalk. “Oh my gosh, is that person dead?” “I don’t know?!?!?!?!” We were optimistic in thinking that he would be alive and get up before we came back through after our interview. We had to wait and see, but the thought of it alone freaked us out.

We made it to the first interview at a school called the Universal de Idiomas. Even though this was technically my interview, Brett came dressed to impress and he was also given an interview! We filled out some paperwork and then I was called into the office to take a personality test on their computer. I was told to mark which of the four descriptions most represented me, and which of the same four least represented me. It was hard! Here’s an example: (a) responsible – can always be counted on (b) kind – considerate of others and their feelings (c) agreeable – you get along well with others or (d) creative – are able to make old ideas new and exciting.  Another example would be (a) argumentative – you think your always right (b) aggressive – you are willing to do what it takes to get things your way  (c) self-centered – don’t care about others or (d) a follower – unable to think for yourself.  I mean, I don’t consider myself to be most like any of those but I guess I’ll pick (d) unable to think for myself?

The second part of the interview lasted about five minutes, tops. After talking a little about my resume, the lady asked how long I was planning to be here and I told her I'd be staying until the end of June. Usually they look for people who can comit to a full year but she said she would call me by the end of the week with their decision. Brett had the same experience during his interview – short and sweet. We knew we probably wouldn’t get a call back, but we figured it was good practice anyways.

On our way back to Gaudy’s, we held our breath from the stinky streets and kept our eyes open for the man in the box on Avenida 3. HE WAS STILL LAYING THERE IN HIS BOX! As we got a little closer, we could see he was lying on his side so we knew he was alive. Thank goodness.

Back to the hostel, we checked our email and saw that we had more interview offers! This was a huge relief because the first one wasn’t very promising. We spent the evening sending emails back and forth, trying to schedule more and more interviews between other interviews. We still had Brett’s set up for the next day (Wednesday), two set up for Thursday, and then two more set up for Friday. When Brett or I would get an email about an interview, we would mention the other because we thought it would be ideal to both work at the same school and have the same schedule. Luckily, it worked. We were both able to schedule an interview for every school we heard back from. Interviewing and scheduling for interviews was exhausting.

The next day was Brett’s interview with the Washington School. Though I was allowed to come in for an interview as well, the lady said they don't usually hire couples because they would be down two teachers instead of one when we would do our border run to renew our tourist visas. That tidbit of information kinda stunk, but we were off to our second interview anyway! This was going to be our first shot at trying to catch a bus to where we wanted to go. We again talked to Andrés at the desk and he told us we had to catch bus into Guachipelin, then take a taxi the rest of the way. The bus stop was three blocks away and we were already sweating by the time we got there. The first bus pulled up and I asked the driver if it was going to pass through Guachipelin to which he responded “no”. We turned around and stepped off of the bus like the tourists that we are. There was a bus on its way toward us and a woman behind us pointed to it and said she thinks that it is the bus we need. We were excited to see that she was right.

We arrived to the Washington School and were really impressed with the playgrounds and plethora of trees in the gated area. This school was for children so I was super excited about that! Together, Brett and I sat down with Miss. Danielle and we talked a little about our resumes. She then started to describe the school and said they have preschool through high school there and that the school is bilingual. They have talent shows at the end of the year, we would get to decorate our own classroom and the school would reimburse us. We would get paid in cash biweekly and the school day was from 8am to 3pm. If we wanted, we could start our own club or tutor for an hour after school for extra moolah. Everything she said sounded perfect. Danielle actually was certified through the International TEFL Academy just like we were! She started teaching last year but loved it so much she decided to postpone grad school and stay this year, too. We left the interview super excited, but sad that they likely weren’t going to hire us both.

Day three of interviews…here we go! The first interview was at Pro-Language. This bus stop was a lot farther away than the one to Guachipelin but we made it. On our way to the school, I pulled out my trac phone (oh yeah, we both got trac phones the first day here) to check the time since we had to walk longer than we expected. I saw I had a missed call but I didn't recognize the number. I asked Brett if he knew who had called us so he pulled out his phone and saw that he also had a missed call from the Washington School. We just stared at each other, both nervous and excited at the same time. He called them back and Danielle answered the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying so I was watching Brett’s face and listening so close to the tone of his voice. Then, I heard the single best statement that I could hear him say… “We accept.” He hung up the phone and we burst into laughter. We called Pro-Language and said we just accepted full time positions with another school and wouldn’t be in for our interviews. We called the other three schools who we scheduled interviews with and canceled those, too. We had jobs.

Instead of going the whole way to San Pedro, where our interview was going to be, we decided to turn around and go back to our hostel in downtown San Jose. We didn’t know the best place to get off of the bus so we stayed on, hoping it would maybe loop back around? It didn’t. We got to what apparently was the last stop of the day and the driver kicked us off of the bus. Hahaha. He really did. We were going to stay on as long as we were allowed. So now, we didn’t know what town we were in, just somewhere between San Jose and San Pedro….umm. We walked a few blocks until we found a bus stop and just waited there. Soon, a bus came by that had “San Jose” written on the front of it so we thought we were saved. We jumped on the bus without asking for sure where it was headed (dumb). Five minutes or so down the road, we realized that it was not headed back to San Jose but rather farther from it. San Jose is wehre it STARTED. We got off the bus and waited at yet another, random, bus stop. We were lost, but still so incredibly pumped that we were going to be making money here soon. Nothing could ruin our day.

We made it back to Gaudy’s safe and sound without too much trouble after all. To celebrate BOTH of our NEW JOBS at the Washington School, we took the rest of the afternoon to ourselves and hung out at El Parque Metropolitano La Sabana.

Brett and his bamboo trees.

Back at the hostel we enjoyed a few beers from the grocery store and toasted to our new life in Costa Rica. Salud and PURA VIDA! J