Baby steps...

I did my first home study on Friday. Between the referral wait times getting extended and my thoughts that it might make sense to start the paperwork on US soil (if I move abroad) I went ahead and bit the bullet. I will say though that getting a cashier's check to pay the agency (and subsequently seeing my balance) was very, very stressful. I think going abroad where I can make the most money is making a lot of sense from a sheer practical perspective. If I don't, I will be broke after paying for this adoption. Being an elementary school teacher means that I will never make six figures, but going abroad will mean I can come back with a decent chunk of change. The SW said that I can probably just get my homestudy updated when I arrive in the foreign country. If not, well I can update the homestudy when I return to the States. So the first big step in my adoption is done.

Am I leaning towards adopting or teaching abroad or both???

I don't know.

Meanwhile, I also tried to book my hotel for the job fair but when I went to the job fair site, they had changed my application. I wasn't able to view jobs or find out where the hotel is. I wondered if I was still invited to the fair (I was given a verbal invite some weeks back) so I emailed them to find out what was going on. Turns out, the director of the fair is in South Africa working with The Oprah Leadership Academy on helping them find a new school head and will be unavailable for the next week to ten days. His fantastic opportunity might be a problem for me. By the time he gets back and figures out what is going on with my application I might not be able to get a room in the fair's main hotel or a reasonable airline ticket. What would that mean? It would mean that I might have to resort to getting an interview from a school willing to do it without meeting me in person (i.e. over the phone/ Skype/video conference, etc.). That's possible, but it does narrow my chances. I know that the school in Hong Kong did hiring last year with a video conference interview and I got a job at the American School of London a few years ago with a phone interview. (Don't ask me why I turned that down-- and Sao Paulo, Lisbon, Shanghai, and Togo!!!!!!! d.u.m.b.) So, I may not be going to the fair after all. We'll see.