How it all started...

For those of you not completely familiar with the background of our story, let me drop some knowledge for you. I grew up overseas from the age of 2 to 15. My stepdad worked for Halliburton and we would move every two years. We lived in Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. It was an amazing childhood for me and made me more tolerant, understanding, and appreciative of all cultures and diversity in the world. I grew up without prejudice and my parents raised me to respect other cultures. My brother, sister, and I always attended American schools where other kids from all over the world also attended, many being from the United States. We came back to Oklahoma in October of 1987 and finished Jr. High and High School.

Since graduating from college in 1997, I always thought it would be nice to get back overseas someday, as a teacher. I made the effort to begin the process in 2002. I completed all application requirements, paid my fees to ISS (International School Services), and was about to buy my plane ticket to Philadelphia for the ISS job fair. I ended up needing shoulder surgery from baseball and it kept me from attending the job fair, also losing $500 of fees...awesome! So, I finished my Masters in Education Administration and packed my things for Texas in 2004. Administrative opportunities were far better and teacher pay was better. I taught 3 years in Texas and was an Assistant Principal for 3 years. Okay...that should catch you up to now.

Angie and I were in Jamaica last summer (2009) for vacation and met a couple who teach in Germany. We had dinner with them and asked a ton of questions. They were very gracious and helpful as we were very interested in how it all worked. This recaptured my desire to pursue it once again. Angie was on board and willing to at least attend the job fair in Boston (February, 2010). We spent the majority of October through January doing research on schools overseas. I still had my profile and application with ISS and Angie created one. I am not going to lie...it was a lot of work and extremely stressful at times, since we were both also committed to our jobs in Texas, and had plenty to do. I spent many days working until 8 or 9 at night sending resumes and applications to more than 30 different schools all over the world. There were many schools we didn't contact for different reasons. Since we were applying as a "couple", we had to seek out schools which had openings for both of us. Angie wanted to focus on Europe and wasn't too keen on Saudi Arabia, even though I told her good things about it. I understood, as she hadn't been exposed to life elsewhere. We didn't apply to any schools in Saudi Arabia...until one contacted us. KAUST on the west coast was a new school and looked very promising. I replied and maintained interest but never heard back from them...we were both unimpressed with the lack of professionalism in that regard (more on them later). We completed more online applications and sent more resumes than I care to remember.

To be continued...