Opportunities

It's that time of year, the time when new academic positions are advertised for the universities following a US academic year. I'm sifting through the suggestions in my inbox and dreaming about moving to Hong Kong, Shanghai or even just Seoul. We have no reason to leave here, I like this town, even though it's tiny and remote. We have found a community of creative and like minded people to hang out with and even do some projects with.

But there is always this restless pull in me. Ambition. I want to be appreciated in my job more. I want better opportunities for growth. One of the best parts of my job is that I'm left completely independent and have no contact with administration and rarely confer with colleagues. It means I can essentially do what I want. But it's also one of the worst parts- the disconnection from other academics and there is no encouragement to be innovative or engage in professional development. The other foreigners here are ESL teachers, all of them and they do not understand my job and why it is different. They are all on a 'break' from real life for a couple of years or so and do not take teaching seriously. They don't get that I worked my ass off for 12 years to get this position.

This morning I applied for a Hong Kong job and immediately I can picture us living there, in some massive high rise, me taking the metro to work every day, Glen playing regular shows and working online. I would never need to cook. The shopping would be amazing. We could go on quick and cheap weekends away.

I hope I'm not too disappointed if none of these applications turn into anything. I will be content if we stay here, I will find a way to make it work. There is not the same discontent I felt when we were in Osaka this time last year and I KNEW I had to do something different or I would implode.

It's been a thousand years...

... since I last blogged properly, and even though I think about it often, I don't really have the urge to write. Until tonight. Today I found out, quite by accident, that my high school Italian teacher died in December last year. Signora Carter was a wonderful teacher, enthusiastic, helpful, funny... she even visited me in hospital when I spent my 16th birthday suffering from Glandular Fever. Even though I haven't seen her since I graduate A LONG TIME AGO, I've thought about her often over the years... I imagined running into her one day when I was home for Christmas. I would have loved to have sat down with a coffee and told her about my life now. Told her how much her teaching meant to me. Today I feel a bit shaken up about it, she was too young, she had daughters who would be teenagers now... I never got a chance to tell her how much I appreciated her work. How I still love and speak Italian to this day, mostly because of her passion. I'm feeling sad and nostalgic for everything from home- I'm in touch with a handful of school friends, I left my hometown 15 years ago, I've never been back to my school. I feel very, very far away right now. Maybe it is also because everything is so unsettled here at the moment- we are on the brink of SOMETHING but nobody is sure what it is. I keep waiting for it to happen, but everything is carrying on as normal. There are papers to grade, student's to counsel, exams to write. I feel tense AND sad tonight.