Decision time (and a good lot of photos)
Just over three months ago, Judith and I left for Yellowknife. The two months before leaving we cleaned out our apartment and shrunk our amount of belongings to fit in one room of 1.90m by 4.5m and 2.45m (that last dimension is the height of the room, and to be really fair about how much stuff we have left, mentioning that dimension is quite relevant). Just before those two months, we lived for ~360 days in New Zealand. The 5.5 months before the time in New Zealand we were able to do some really cool senior communication assignments (Judith) and finish a second Bachelor of Education in Physics, while being an assistant-teacher in the same university for applied sciences (Bas). The two years before that were spent in 3 stints of living and working in Yellowknife, North of 60, Canada. In the last four years, Judith and I have never been able to call a place home for longer than a few months. So, the goal in Canada was to set-up that kind of situation, in which we would be able to call a place home for a longer period of time.
Don’t count on them High Schools!
Quite fast after returning to Yellowknife, it became clear that student numbers in both High Schools were going down. Partially because of economic situations teachers in the schools held on to their jobs, also unable to find a position back home (which a lot of young teachers do; they come up to Yellowknife for a few years experience, then go back to where their family and friends live). Whatever the reasons, whatever the logic, halfway May Judith and I decided we needed a good plan B. Talaria Communicatie is doing fine, but I had been without a teaching position since January, and despite being able to explain, besides volunteering as a tutor and as a coach with Track & Field, being unemployed for too long isn’t that great, neither for future job perspectives or for one’s sanity. So I carefully went through job postings in the Netherlands, cherry-picking, finding the schools I would like to work. All of the schools I applied for a job were either international schools or schools with a bilingual (English immersion) program. And in the end that meant three schools.
Job interviews
Two of those schools ended up inviting me for a job interview. Due to timing issues (which included me swearing like a sailor one day) I had to decline one interview, since I had already accepted the job with the other school. In hindsight, I would have liked the choice between the jobs, or at least the option of doing both interviews. But even with a week of time to decide, the other school still managed to push their deadline to apply by 4 days, and despite having a 2-3 day window, they invited me for an interview one day after I accepted the other job, or to be more precise, ~16 hours later. Despite all that, getting the chance to interview for 2 out of those 3 jobs I applied for felt pretty good.
Tough decision
Anyway, heaps of technicalities, but those have been part of our life the last few weeks. Add to that a job that came up with one of the High Schools in Yellowknife, start of June, and you can picture how much pondering and deciding we had to do. Because a position posted is one, an interview is two, a job offer is three, a labour market opinion is four, and the work permit makes step 5 in the process of being able to work in such a job in Yellowknife. All those steps take time, they all have requirements and the school that posted, posted in such a way that one the requirements wasn’t met. So we decided to go back to The Netherlands. Like I said, I accepted the school that offered me after a nice interview over Skype, bringing me back to Emmen, the city where I was born and raised. With all kinds of decisions to make that come with that, like finding a place to live, deciding whether we’re going to buy a place or rent one, and where, since our experiences have learned us we would like to live in a smaller town, close to amenities, but not too close to too many people. We’ll need to buy quite a few things we don’t own anymore, to fill up a new place and make it livable. Anyway, you get the idea.
Head up high
We’re not overly sad a life in Yellowknife did not work out the way we planned. After a month we realized we could see ourselves living in Yellowknife, just as well as in The Netherlands. Both have a unique list of pros and cons. We’re taking some of the best of Yellowknife with us. A few friendships that we hope will last, good memories, heaps of good pictures and as of today, some nice art as well. (It did cost us though, ouch!) We’ll keep you posted and in the meantime, we’re pondering on what the new name of our blog will be…. after an “Aboot” and an “About”, after “Siebring in Canada”, then “New Zealand” and now “Canada” again, it will be “Siebring in The Netherlands” if we would follow that logic, but that would be too obvious, too easy, and as most of you know, or have found out: We almost never take the easy way. We take the way we like. And it’s bringing us to one of our three homes now: The Netherlands.
