International teaching and a completed Capstone Project

Quick update - mum and dad arrived safe and sound yesterday from the UK. Lots of sunshine today to enjoy Washington at its best. Planning little trips and days relaxing - including (of course) some time at the casinos!

Other updates - well we've narrowed the countries for our job search following our English teaching certification in September - short list is China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. We have selected these countries because they pay well, are relatively easy to get jobs/visas as newly qualified teachers, and are safe and interesting places. So that is all getting quite exciting. ... Next step with the plan is we need to develop our grammar skills - this is a pre-requisite for the classes, and we were admitted to the program on the understanding we would know a little more than we did on the interview (!)

With Andy's parents visiting, that also means that is is not too far off for our trip to the UK in June. Nearly time to get ready for that.

Also, further good news this week was Evan solidly passing his Capstone Project for his degree with flying colors - what he had expected to be a draft was passed with an A by his adviser with just minor corrections. The degree is now within easy reach!!!

So, it now feels like we have moved onto the next step in the plan - the last few months of slog and hard work are starting to pay off, we can relax a little and let the next few months roll on. The countdown can begin!!!
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"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it" (Chinese proverb).

Europe and Asia starting to firm up

So things are moving on. We have been looking further on in the year (after our summer trip to the UK and our CELTA class) and making firmer plans. We want to spend some longer time in the UK again later in the year to really get more of a feel it when we are not just on a quick one or two week trip there. Also, it would be nice to spend a bit longer on traveling in Europe - but we don't want to blow the savings all at once! We have been doing some research and budgeting, and with a pretty strict budget we are pretty sure we can make a couple of nice trips happen while we are there. We have pretty much decided to spend two weeks in Malta (a small Mediterranean island country), and a week in Morocco. We would love to go to Israel too, but it is much more expensive, and we are saving our cash for doing some working and traveling in Asia once we have gotten our teaching qualifications. Current frontrunners for these longer term places in Asia are South Korea, Japan or Hong Kong (which we really liked when we were there in 2009). Now we have sorted out Europe options, we will now be looking more closely at these Asian countries for living and working ....

Evan has continued to work hard to get his degree finished (this will also make his teaching prospects and pay as a teacher higher too) and turned in his first draft of his Capstone Project this week - all 66 pages of it - a really interesting paper. It is a discussion of observances of religious practices around the world using 7 of the countries we have visited on our travels, both from the eyes of a traveler and from an academic perspective. He chose Cambodia, Spain, Nepal, Egypt, England, Indonesia and Argentina as the countries to analyze and discuss. Hopefully his adviser will like it. Andy was very impressed.

Andy's mum and dad are just a couple of weeks away from their visit, so we are also getting ready for that. Both looking forward to it. With their arrival comes our planned slight deceleration with our very busy work/school schedules - Andy will cut back down to around 35 hours a week (has been up to 45 or so) and Evan should start to wind down a little both with school and his private practice (which has been pretty much fully booked the last few months).

Well that's our news for now. More to follow!
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"What are you waiting for?" (Lope de Vega)