On 11/27/19 Tori FINALLY heard back from Westgate, and SHE GOT THE JOB! She is beyond thrilled!!!

Here's a little information about Westgate. They are a dispatch company, meaning employers, mainly universities give contracts to Westgate, and Westgate hires and sends employees to fill these contracts. Tori applied for the university position, which she got! They do have other positions, like working with children, but Tori was most interested in a university gig.

In Japan it is common to see many dispatch companies. Many of these companies will send employees to multiple schools throughout the week. However, Westgate sends employees to one university for the entire semester, something Tori is happy about and prefers over the other method. She wants a home-base.

Tori interviewed for this position on November 1st. Yes, it took THAT long to hear back as to whether or not she got the position. She did her research and learned that it is actually common for it to take 2-4 weeks to hear back. Interestingly, Westgate asks potential employees to turn in all paperwork that would be needed to process visas, and employ a person up-front. So, the interview ends up being the last and final step! Tori read that many people do not get hired after the intense interview. This is probably due to the high number of applicants. It made the waiting period more intense, but it made the offer letter even more happy and special!

As mentioned, the interview itself was very intense. Tori went through general interview questions, submitted a lesson plan in advance and walked the interviewer through the lesson plan, and had to correct grammatical mistakes (something that is not easy to do on the spot). Tori spent hours creating the lesson plan. She researched the format that Westgate typically uses, and put quite a bit of research into CELTA lesson plans (as she does not hold a CELTA certificate this took quite a bit of time).

One reason why Tori really liked and was attracted to this position is that lesson plans are made for you. The instructor, however, has the flexibility to modify and change the lesson plans as they see fit, as long as the objective is met. Tori thinks this is a HUGE plus, as lesson planning can take a good bit of time. Additionally, the same lesson is taught multiple times a day, also taking a bit of stress off of the instructor. Furthermore, instructors will not teach more than 5.5 hours a day, although they are expected to be on campus for 8 or 9 hours a day. That means lots of time to tweak and modify lessons for the remainder of the week! In Tori's opinion, this sounds like a wonderful gig, especially following her most recent highstress job as an after-school program Director (a position she loved very much, but as mentioned was high stress).

Lastly, Tori will only be working the duration of semesters, meaning a total of 6 months of the year. While she won't be paid for the time not working, this is also a huge advantage. We did not realize how many visitors we would be getting while living here. While we love having visitors, it is not ideal to use all of our vacation to accommodate visitors. After all, we live in Asia and want to explore! If we are able to have visitors sync their visit with Tori's off-season, Tori will have plenty of time to spend with visitors, and Miklos and Tori can still travel Asia! Tori also has a few ideas up her sleeve of things to do during her off-season which she's really excited about. Ideally, she wants to use that time exploring other Asian countries as much as possible. However, we will see how that pans out!

As for now... SUPER BIG CONGRATS TO TORI!

Also, Tori will not be able to share which university she is working at on social media, as outlined in her contract.