Got home today to a message that my AEON recruiter would call me back in a couple of hours. So I spend the next 3 hours walking around with the phone glued to my right hand waiting for it to ring.
When it did, well, turns out they want me to go to Japan! Just need to wait for Dave to seal the deal now. And to be honest if I got through after my interview, he'll fly through.
If I thought Sunday was tough, today was ... horrendous.
Arrived nicely on time, confident that if I got through the lesson plan, obviously my sparkling personality would carry me through today. Yeah right!
It was a one on one interview that started with me presenting a lesson from one of AEON's textbooks. I had 5 minutes to prepare, and thank god my recruiter went through the lesson with me first because honestly, I didn't even understand it myself. I just about managed to cobble together a lesson on something I didn't fully understand. Well could you explain the difference between 'I have been waiting for five minutes' and 'I have waited for for five minutes'???
The lesson went ok but there were definitely times that the recruiter didn't understand what I was explaining, definitely some times that I didn't understand wtf I was explaining.
After the lesson, he went through the things I did well and the things I could improve on, particularly trying to get the student talking for 85% of the time, and then asked me to redo the lesson. Ugh! It was horrible!
Anyway with that over it eased into a more normal interview mode with the normal questions n' stuff. The most interesting question was what my two references, one personal, one professional, would give as my top three strengths and weaknesses.
Anyhoo, it's all over now. I don't really hold much hope for it ... but I guess we'll wait and see.
The night before the interview was insane!
I'd come home from the US on the friday afternoon, jetlagged, before flying back to London on saturday night before my interview on Sunday. In that time I needed to sleep, do a lot of family stuff and my lesson plan. And of course my lesson plan ended up being done in the airport and until 3 in the morning.
Got up at 7 to have a quick look over it, realised how much I hated it, but had to print it out anyway. While I was having my shower, my sister very kindly ironed my 'cool as shit' black shirt, unfortunate burning it so that I had to wear my 'boring as crap' white shirt instead. But I had way too much to be worrying about rather than my shirt.
Managed to get to the hotel dead on time, and entered a room with about 60 people of very varied ages, from 21 to 60. The span of experience was amazing! From people who weren't finished college yet, to people who had lived and taught english in Japan for years.
So at 11 we had a very comprehensive (read long and fairly boring) look at AEON and got to see their advertising campaigns including Mariah Carey and Celine Dion! Then we got the 101 reasons not to go to Japan. Most of them were the stuff I'd already considered, financial, family, emotional, culture shock. But I dunno, it kinda showed that they weren't interested in fooling people, or hiding anything, that they were as honest about the challanges as they were about the benefits. Four hours later, we were split into 6 groups, 3 to present lessons at 3pm and the other 3 to present at 5pm.
I'd never been more relieved than when I found out I was in the second group and that I had 3 hours off before my lesson and decided to put it to good use. 3 hrs in an internet cafe, completely redoing my lesson plan stuff cost me a fortune but competely boosted my confidence. Got some really cute images for my picture sheet, some e-cards for the conversational part and honed my 'What is Halloween' thingy.
Coming back after lunch, with my new lesson plan, I definitely felt a lot more confident. The 6 other people in my group presented some very different types of plans, including another guy doing halloween. But I felt that I managed to engage them, get them interested, even got them talking in silly voices. Of course I went far quicker than I'd intended but just about managed to cover it up.
Once everyone was done we hung out in the lobby, chatting, swopping stories about other schools until the recruiter came out with an envelope for everyone, either a 'you suck, go away' one or a 'we're not sure if you suck or not, so come back tomorrow' one.
I guess the blog title gives away the fact that mine was good news! So I now had til 9am on Tuesday morning to worry about the personal interview.
So there's only 3 days til my interview, and obviously I'm completely prepared!
Or not ...
I have absolutely nothing done, and until today, I didn't even have an idea. Thankfully the 3 hour drive to chicago, and of course Dave as inspiration helped me come up with the idea of Halloween.
Granted that's about as far as it's gone! I'm to queen of the last minute miracle ...
