Panama Update #16
July 29, 2008
I went to the Colegio Yitzhak Rabin for an interview with the principal at 9:00 AM. It was my second time there this week. It is a small school of 20 students per grade (1-12) with about 240 student in total. About 40% of the students are from the Reform branch and those students take Hebrew during the day. The rest of the students take French. The principal met me at the office right on time. We sat down and she said (in Spanish) that she did not speak English. She asked if we could talk in Spanish. I told her I would do my best. To my surprise, somehow we exchanged all the necessary information and at the end she said that she thought I did a good job. She was able to help me with some of the grammar and vocabulary, but overall it went really well. I still know about the same amount of Spanish as when I came, but I am able to formulate it into sentences better. What I have also improved on is the ability to understand much better. My ear for listening and distinguishing the words has improved. As far as the job, she is looking for full-time, but so far I have decided not to accept full-time. She will let me know on Friday if she can figure something out. I will wait to see what happens at another interview in another school tomorrow. I also got a lead on a school for Chinese Panamanians that is close to here, and I have sent them my Resume an hour ago, so will wait to see if anything happens with that.
July 30, 2008
I arrived early for my interview at Instituto Alberto Einstein so I went into Supermercado Riba Smith in the shopping center Multi Plaza across the street. This is the newest and most expensive mall in Panama City. We had heard that this supermarket has the biggest range of products and it is true. It is huge with all sorts of familiar looking brand names such as the Morning Star Veggie Burgers. They also have a huge cafeteria with a variety of food and other departments such as kitchen utensils and a drug store. I finally found the ant poison I was looking for, which is the first time I have seen it after lookikng in about a dozen different stores. I picked up a couple of items and headed across the street to the school. It was difficult to find the door and once I found it, security was tight. There is a big steel door and they searched me and my bag, and I had to leave my identification card with them when I went in. In the entryway there was metal detector and they make you stand there for a few minutes before they let you in. By the time I wandered around the school with no one to ask for help in finding the human resources, I was starting to lose my patience. The woman from human resources was not very welcoming and asked me to fill out a 3 page application. She would not give out much information about which grade level or subject the job was in. It was not a very good atmosphere, so I ended up leaving without even filling out the application. The best thing about the morning was discovering the supermarket.
The interview I had in the afternoon went surprisingly well. It was with a college that offers ESL classes in the evening and Bachelor Degree classes in the day. The Bachelor's program is associated with Louisville Univeristy in Louisville, KY. They want me to send them my graduate school transcript because I may qualify to teach psycholgy classes in the day school. The pay for teaching a 40 hour class is $1200, which for Panama is good. They will probably call me back for another interview. So far this is the closest thing I have found to what I was looking for- teaching adults and part-time. I will probably know more in the next week or so.
Getting home from that interview took about 2 hours. It was right in the middle of rush hour and it started raining, so every taxi was filled with people and the competition to get one was fierce. When a taxi here stops for you, they roll down their window and you are supposed to shout out what section of town you are going to. They then decide if they will take you or not, based on which part of town they are heading to. I tried for a while to find one, but it was too much of a mess, so I relaxed under the roof of a bus stop (those were crammed too) until it slowed down a bit and some taxi driver took me in. That was my first time being downtown in the rush hour, so maybe that is normal.
