2 Weeks Back

After two weeks, I've had four interviews with universities and was invited to have a second interview with one of them.  I've filled out more job applications than I can count (why, US universities, do you all use the same system, but force us humble job applicants to enter the same information over and over and over).  I even applied for a job back in Bogota, although I doubt anything will come of it.  I've spent some quality time trying to find out what I would have to do to get my teaching license in Ohio (not easy, even though I already have a Master's in TESL and the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in Spanish) and how much money I would have to spend to do this (too much).  I also figured out that there are indeed other states where I could move and get a public school teaching job fairly easily (North Carolina, for example, which I need to find out more about). I wrote countless essays for a short-term Peace Corps TEFL training position, and re-examined what I'd have to do to join the foreign service (not yet, that's more in the long-term plan for me).  I'm trying to figure out how to write a proposal for research that I think should be held at an ivy-league school (so out of my league, but it'd be a great learning experience) and how I can videotape myself teaching pronunciation now that I have no students and am semi-stuck in rural Ohio during everyone's summer vacation (teaching portfolio at http://erin.lowry.googlepages.com). 

There are so many things that I'd forgotten about, like peach cobbler, root beer floats, and watering the plants.  There's also a lot of things that you can't do without a job, like get a cell phone plan and buy a car (if you want loans). The first time I walked into Wal-mart, I literally felt sick to my stomach.  It's so easy to get and accumulate "things" here, something I want to try to avoid if possible.  I finally cleaned out the boxes that held all of my notes and papers from undergrad, which ended up being easier to part with than I thought it would.  I've spent a lot of time talking to friends back in Colombia and El Salvador, along with some here.  I think the shock of being back here might have been easier being in Cincinnati, so that at least I would have been in a city as opposed to a cornfield.  Hopefully I'll find out early this week if I'm going to get one of these uni jobs, and will have a couple of days to run down to El Salvador to see my husband and collect my cat.  Still no news on his visa, but the application should be in San Sal by now.