A Journey To Teach Abroad

I'm exhausted. Really exhausted. Now that I've got that out the way, let me explain why I'm exhausted. I'm sure all of my teaching friends will understand what I mean when I say this year has felt like a VERY long year. For those of you who are not teachers, it goes a little bit like this. We work hard throughout the year and put in far more than our contracted hours, to the point where I suspect it gets more than a little bit dangerous for us to be working. Add to that all the usual stress of teaching and by the end of the year every teacher is literally at the end of their ability to stay awake. Don't worry, I'm not about to go into some huge rant about how my job is harder than others, that's not the point of my blog. Besides it has been done far more eloquently by others than I could ever attempt to do. If you want to hear all about it simply do a quick Google search, you will find plenty. I'm simply setting the scene a little bit. Wonderful P

Guess what turned up yesterday!!!! Yep, DHL actually did their job properly. More to the point, and much to my surprise, they actually did their job REALLY well. The contact turned up a day earlier than their claimed delivery date, wonders will never cease. What was in the contract I hear you ask? Well, I'm afraid I have no intention of going into any specific details, as it's private, however I will tell you a few generic things compared to the standard UK teachers contract. Firstly, they own your soul. The contract is weighted in their favour, unlike in the UK where our unions have negotiated us a great deal that protects the teacher. I'm going to clarify that a little bit, it all seems to be reasonable and nothing within it concerns me in any way, but as international school are businesses they have a vested interest in protecting themselves. Once I had read the contract I only really had 1 question for the school. The contract wasn't particularly clear in

A quick update before I get onto what I really want to talk about ... transport. Over the weekend I sent all of the information I had to hand for my work permit application to the school, suffice to say it was substantial. I still have to get my Medical sorted (Watch this space) and a photograph with a blue background, so I'm off to get that sorted tonight (Must remember to shave!). Planes Normally getting to your place of work is quite simple, even if you are relocating within the country. This isn't quite the case when you decide to take a job teaching on the other side of the world, in fact it becomes even more difficult when you want to move your whole family. One of the major hurdles I suspect a lot of teachers will encounter will be with the logistics of booking and organising flights to your new country of residence. One of my first questions to my new Headteacher was 'Do I need to book my own flights?'. In my case the answer was probably not, but due to

The joys of Vaccinations, Visas and Finances So, As of this morning I've had the first part of the official paperwork through, I have a sneaky feeling this is going to be a long process, I'll explain more in a minute. Vaccines For the moment I'm going to talk about the joy that is Vaccines. The very thought of having someone repeatedly stab me with a needle is not what you might call my favorite past time. If your not sure of what vaccines you need, have a look at the following link: http://www.londonvaccinationclinic.co.uk/travel-vaccinations-for/asia-pacific/malaysia/ As soon as I had confirmation that I would be going and a rough idea of the date for my travel I contacted my local GP (Yesterday). I'm not going to name names, but suffice to say I was not overly surprised when they told me there would be a long wait for an appointment, my surgery is renowned for that. What i was surprised about was the fact that I needed to have a telephone appointment wit

So it's all been (kinda) confirmed! The offer has been sent and I've accepted it, just waiting for the formal contract, etc. I'm making the whole family up sticks and move half way around the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited, but I have to admit that right now I'm feeling a little more than a bit nervous. As a teacher I always just assumed that my career would begin and end in the UK. I'm not for a moment saying that it's not going to end there, just that if you had asked me 5 years ago where I saw my teaching going, it wouldn't be Malaysia. Interestingly enough, i really do think that there is something to be said for the fact that International schools seem to be able to offer the British Curriculum in a method more akin to how British state schools would like to be able to. It's going to be interesting to see if that is the reality of it or not. I have so many questions about how international schools work, I'm sure I'