Limbo

Well, it's official. Toto, I'm not in Taiwan anymore.

I returned to my parents' home in Wichita, Kansas, on Monday, very jet lagged but otherwise none the worse for wear. Kansas--or at least our little section of it--is so far proving to be everything I remembered it to be. Which is to say, a typical American mess of curvilinear streets leading nowhere in particular, every house having a basketball net over the garage door and three feet of pointless, useless grass between not the house and the road, but between the road and the sidewalks.

So far, I have resisted the urge to kiss the sidewalk. But after Taiwan, I have become very aware of great a thing sidewalks are in the life of a city--though I can't quite call Wichita a city.

Prior to my decision to leaving Taiwan, I had been scheduled to work the Saturday before my departure. Having to leave the country on such short notice, I told Jay I did not intend to work that Saturday. Jay actually had the temerity to tell me I had to work--that not doing so "put us in a bad spot."

I love the attitudes of management types sometimes. I had just been put in a much worse spot by being, essentially, forced to leave Taiwan on about three days' notice, without pay for either my flight to Taiwan or my flight home. And I had given more notice than the school usually gets when a teacher is ill. And I had no contract.

It's a mystery to me why I'm unable to handle these situations with enough, for lack of a better word, manliness. I fudged and said I needed to see someone before I left who would only be available hours I was scheduled to work. Jay pressed me repeatedly for information about who this person was and why I couldn't see him later in the day. I persistently refused to give any information about how important this meeting was and made clear the person could not see me any other time before I was scheduled to depart Taiwan.

I should have been up front and said, plainly, that Shane had no ability to force me to work the final Saturday I was in the country, as I had no contract with Shane (my contract had been with Eve and Ruby--a point brought up when I requested payment of my flight home) and Shane had just made clear it had no intention of employing me long-term. But instead, I turned into a jellyfish and didn't tell Jay off properly, as I should have.

Ah, well. Water under the bridge and all that.

For the time being, I find myself in a state of limbo. I have not yet put in any applications for other jobs abroad, whether in Taiwan, Russia, Brazil, or anywhere else on G_d's green acre. I have done a bit of looking at positions in Russia and the Ukraine and have seen a few that look promising. But I am waiting to receive my actual CELTA certificate, which I did not get before going to Taiwan, before I start applying.

I will also be doing a bit of looking into the GRE. Tuesday, between bouts of sleep, I managed to call someone at the University of Pennsylvania about its Master's program in TESOL. It sounds promising, and I have been absolutely assured that I do not need to have majored in English to enter the program. The only other possible hitch is that I didn't take any math courses in college and might have to find a couple to take before I can get into a program in Pennsylvania. But presumably, I could be in this program as early as this summer, provided I take my GRE and get my application in by the end of March.

My parents have been amazingly supportive in all of this. My father thinks my best move is to keep right on travelling and seeing the world. And there is something to be said for that. There are so many places I might be interested in seeing and working--though a fair number of them would be difficult to break into, since it's hard for Americans to work in the European Union.

But all of this can start to be worked out next week, when I will have my CELTA and can start putting in applications.