The years keep Marching on 2015

2015

This was a big year of changes. Regis and I spent a few weeks ignoring each other, avoiding the inevitable but finally in January decided to officially break up. We decided to not announce it but tell people as we talked to or ran into them. This was easier I think but lead to some funny conversations next year.  I decided to bring mom to Taiwan to help kick her depression and to enroll in the master’s degree at Framingham that held classes in Taipei. While I was still thinking about leaving teaching, the thing is a masters degree just looks good, you know?

Mom came out, I started my first class during Chinese New Year, I was super nervous because it had been out of school for more than a minute and I hadn’t done that well the first time around. School was great, I realized I do know a thing or two about education and teaching. TESOL was really a great class for me to start with, I mean come on, what have I been doing for the last 14 years???

Casey got back in touch, and went to great lengths to try to get me back. A lot of talking, and he wrote me a handwritten letter every day for several months. The general tone was, I love you, I want you to be happy, I think I can make you happy, let me try. There was a lot more to it, but ultimately how do you keep saying no to that?  I finally agreed to him coming out to see what might be there, and we got back together… Jesus here I am in another damn long-distance relationship.

I have to say he was smart about it though, we made sure someone went somewhere every 3 months or so, and that we just combined and split all the travel costs regardless of who traveled where. Which really addressed the frustration that comes from one person doing more of the traveling or shouldering the lion’s share of the expenses because that breeds resentment.

I completed the first three of my classes and made a good impression on my classmates, so much so that they recommended me to their employers. I had an amazing interview at a school and thought that was going to be my new job but it fell through at the last minute. The same day I got “the strange” you maybe aren’t getting a job here email, I also got an email offering me an interview at a fancy private school that I didn’t really think I would get an interview at. I rocked my interview and they offered me the job, Hizzah I started in August.

Went home that summer to see family and Casey, then to work in August. Before my job had even really started, the school who I’d not been able to take the job because of flight timing the previous year emailed to offer me a job, but my master’s classes interfered plus I was excited about teaching science to lower elementary school, really fun. University trucked along, work was challenging but good. The year carried on like this.

…. to be continued