*Very* well, thanks for asking

I had my interview with Interac on Saturday afternoon. Daniela and I were able to borrow Louisa's car (thanks again Lou) the night before, which made getting all the way out to Revere quite easy. I guess Interac really goes out of its way to save a few bucks, because it was quite an inconvenient location. If you depend on public transportation, then you would have been disappointed to find out that no bus, subway or commuter rail line goes anywhere near the Marriott in Revere (although after emailing the hotel, I found out they have a free shuttle service to the airport).

The people I was interviewing with were pretty green. There were four guys, including myself, and a girl who seemed pretty smart. I don't know how she would be as an English teacher, but she seemed much brighter than the other guys there. When asked 'Why Japan?' the other three guys gave very generic and lame answers ('No I've never been to Japan and no, I don't speak any Japanese, but I'm REALLY interested in Japan.' or 'Well, I want to teach English in Japan because I come from a family of teachers'), but she said that she had been studying Japanese on her own for a little while, had been there on vacation before, and wanted to be in a big city where she could soak up the funky Japanese fashion (she had chosen fashion as a career). For the record, I said that I wanted to go back to Japan because I had loved living there and felt like immersion was the only way I was going to get my Japanese to a high enough level.

The interview took about 4 hours and looked something like this:

8:50am - Meet in the lobby of the hotel
9:00 - 12:00pm - General information session, grammar and personality tests
12:00 - 12:30pm - Short break before the personal interviews
12:30 - 1:15pm - Interview slot 1
1:30 - 2:15pm - Interview slot 2
2:30 - 3:15pm - Interview slot 3
3:30 - 4:15pm - Interview slot 4
4:30 - 5:15pm - Interview slot 5

The information session lasted about 3 hours, but included a personality test (15 min.) and a grammar test (15 min.). After that, we had to schedule personal interviews in one of 5 time slots, which were about 45 minutes in length. Because I had been the first person to show up that day, I got to pick my time slot first. That was huge. Daniela had dropped me off just before 9am and the last personal interview was scheduled for 4:30pm. I felt bad for the kid that showed up to the interview 5 minutes late, because thanks to that, he had to find something to do for 4 hours before he could finish his interview. I was done and on my way back home with D by 1:15 or 1:30pm.

Oh yeah! That reminds me of something Daniela noticed. Why is there a toll on the Tobin bridge only for inbound traffic? It's like the city of Boston is trying to discourage people from the North Shore from coming downtown.

Because of all the NOVA employees who are jumping ship right now, getting back to Japan is going to be a little harder than I thought. While I'm pretty confident that I'll be offered this job, there may not be any openings in December like I wanted. I may have to wait until April, in which case I should apply to JET as well, which would be the exact same job and start date but with a slightly larger paycheck (from 260,000 to 300,000 yen a month). I know Brucie is having problems with NOVA. They offered him a job and then pushed back his start date thanks to all the problems they're having right now. One of the guys I interviewed with at Interac is going through the same thing. Good luck to everyone who is dealing with that. And I'll say again that I predict NOVA bounces back. I'm sticking to my guns.

Technorati tags: Interac, Interview, Japan, Teaching English