Well I guess it's safe to say that this blog has fallen by the wayside. My last post was sometime in the summer of 2009, well before I left to do a teaching stint in Spain, and a lot of things have happened since then.
Most notably, I didn't stay the full year in Spain like I was planning to. To make a long story short, small-town Spain is not very kind to people of non-European descent. This manifested itself in me not getting served at the bread counter in the supermarket, the pharmacist telling me to "get cleaned up" before I came back for a prescription, and people making derogatory remarks about me on the street. While I absolutely adored the kids I was teaching and the school I was working in, my contract only allowed me to work twelve hours a week. If I had been working thirty or forty hours a week, I might have stayed, because most of my time would have been spent working and not dealing with people outside the school. As it was, I made the decision to come home at Christmas. It wasn't an easy decision, but I do believe that it was the right one.
Coming back home, I knew I was walking into one of the worst job markets in a long time and I was prepared to face a long period of fruitless searching. I was very unlucky to have just missed out on a opportunity at the Taiwanese Consulate in Los Angeles when I left for Spain (they actually called me for an interview, but the interview was the day before my flight to Madrid and I didn't think it was appropriate for me to interview knowing I had to leave in 24 hours), and I confess I was a little blue knowing that I could have been working in Los Angeles the past four months instead of enduring racism in Spain.
However, I received a huge, *huge* stroke of luck when a family friend called with an opportunity to work for a local adoption organization. The organization had just received a federal grant to expand its services for adoptees, and they were looking specifically for an adoptee to fill one of their positions. I called the organization that same day and, upon speaking to the project manager, realized that I knew her from my previous work with Children's Home Society and Family Services. I went in to talk with her/interview a few days later, and after about a week received confirmation that I was indeed hired, and all we had to do now was wait for the grant money to come in.
At the moment, we're still waiting, because the government, like any good bureaucracy, is taking its time in getting things off their desks, but I've been in to the office to do some work that will count as volunteer time, just to get things moving so when the money finally comes in we can hit the ground running. The job itself is a little bit of everything, from website design and maintenance to answering phones and making copies. The goal of the program is to create a resource network by adoptees for adoptees, the underlying idea being that adoptees understand themselves better than anyone else, and that we benefit from connecting with other adoptees.
I'm really excited about this job, excited not only because I practically walked into it and because it happened right when I needed it, but because adoption is something that I've thought about and reflected on a lot, and I think this is an amazing opportunity to help shape the direction of services and resources for adoptees and to put all that thinking and reflection to use.
On other fronts, I'm still playing futbol with my Mexican team. It's been something like seven or eight years now that I've been playing on the same team, and there are only a few of us left from the original squad, though we've kept our name, Club America. I tore my meniscus over the summer and didn't finish the season, but I've been back on the field this winter and had a couple decent runs, so hopefully I will be back to playing full ninety-minute matches soon. The girls, as always, welcomed me back with open arms, and I can't reiterate enough how lucky I am to call them friends and teammates. We may not be the best team in the league, but I like the togetherness we have and the sense of loyalty.
I've set myself a goal of writing for at least half an hour every day, in some capacity, whether it's blogging or creative writing, so I'm really going to make an effort to keep this blog updated more regularly.
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