Personal blog

Given the state of the economy and where it is headed, I am very pleased to announce that I have found a job in British Columbia for next year. Happily the job is at an IB school and even better, it is in the lower mainland. It seems like an outstanding school and seems, from the outside anyway, to have all of the qualities one would want in a school. The name of the school is Stratford Hall, and it is located on Commerical Drive in Vancouver.

Part of my job at the school is going to be to provide technology support. It seems from this picture from one of their computer labs that they are using PCs although it is not clear whether they will be running Vista or XP. Hopefully I can introduce some Open Source applications at the school and help trim some costs there.

Of course my main job at the school is going to be their senior mathematics teacher. The school only has 35 teachers, and currently has 1 math teacher in the high school. I'll likely end up teaching IB Mathematical Studies and IB Mathematics SL year 1 and year 2. I'll also end up teaching some MYP mathematics classes again which is exciting, and if they can swing it, a technology course.

Vasilia and I are making plans for moving back to BC. We've already decided that instead of buying a car we are going to join a car co-op. Vasilia's cousin Demetri does this, and it makes a lot of sense. It's a lot like buying a time-share for a car, and then paying for usage. Given the high cost of owning and maintaining a car, this seems like it will be an affordable option. We are also looking into what part of the Greater Vancouver area we want to live, but given that the school is within blocks of a Sky Train station we have a lot of options available to us. Personally I think living in New Westminster in a cheap 2 bedroom apartment makes sense. I can choose to commute either by train or by bike from there and the rent seems very affordable.

We will end up moving back at the end of June, partially because we've paid rent here in Thailand until the end of June and partially because of an interesting quirk of rejoining the Provincial health-care plan. Basically when you come back there is a 2 month waiting period plus however many days remain in the current month. So if we move back right near the end of the month, we can reduce the amount of time we have to rely on private health-care coverage to a minimum.

Everyone here is looking forward to moving back to BC. Even Thanasi is excited about it. This morning he crawled into bed with us just before 6am and announced he had just flown in a space ship to Canada (with his friends Dominique, Gregory, Joshua and JJ no less). This was neat in itself because it's the first time Thanasi has told us about his dreams, but also because it combines together a few things going on our lives. Hopefully we'll be able to connect with friends and family soon after we arrive, but of course we know that the first few weeks back are going to be hectic.