We’ve been in Saigon for two weeks now, and still no luck on the English teaching job front. Honestly, I didn’t really try very hard for the first week and a half. I was soaking it all in, getting massages, and being lazy, because I could. When the realization comes that you need money, and you need it fast, all of a sudden the urge to get a job becomes much stronger (go figure?).

There are a few things I didn’t think about before I left when it came to looking for jobs:

#1) Clothing- I brought with me a nice pair of slacks, and a sort of nice blouse, and thats about it. No shoes except for a pair of flip flops and a pair of Converse. When I began to realize you may actually want to look nice while looking for jobs, I panicked a bit. I decided to meander the streets of Saigon to find a couple nice blouses and maybe a nice skirt. That didn’t go too well, here’s why:

Your Typical Vietnamese Clothing Store.

Are you freakin’ kidding me? I could sew all four of those shirts together and still not have enough fabric to cover all of my torso. I’m a big girl. I’m 5′10″, have C cup bras, and size 11 feet. At first I thought, maybe I’ll be able to find something I can fit into, but then I realized it was a lost cause when both Kris and Jen, who are pretty petite, were close to busting the seems on “large” shirts. The last option was to go get a shirt custom made at a tailor here. I managed to get a pretty nice shirt for under $10, so there’s one obstacle crossed.

#2) Internet Dependency: Every single job that I have acquired in the last seven years has come from me e-mailing my resume into a business. I e-mailed my resume to about 20 different schools, and this is what I came up with.

A little taste of my mailbox...

I’d say about half the e-mails I’ve sent out have been returned because of faulty/no longer existent e-mail addresses.
The other problem with using the internet as a resource is that there are a ton of address listings for the schools. Jen and I decided to hit the pavement for a day, only to come across two schools that were no longer there (who knows if they were even there in the first place), another school with its headquarters on the opposite side of the city, and another school that I forgot had already sent me a rejection letter.

#3) Qualifications- I don’t know what impression I was under when I came here, but I thought being a native English speaker would be enough to get me a job. I was wrong, severely wrong. Most of the people here seem to have TEFL/CELTA training, a bachelor’s, and even a masters degree. I’ve already been rejected from five schools (including the school that Kris now works at).

So, grand plan number two is to rent a motorcycle taxi for the day, and drive around the streets of Saigon looking for various English schools. Normally I’d walk it, but when I’m outside for more than 10 minutes, I begin to sweat profusely, which doesn’t exactly scream “hire me”.

Wish me luck….