Thats good news. Glad to hear you were getting job offers. Did you have to contact a lot of schools? We've been sending out our info, but have heard nothing. We are already overseas teaching and are certified too. We've been sending a letter, CV's, photo, contact info, and references. I'm discouraged, but glad to know it's working out for you. Do you have some suggestions to help improve our chances?

JIS,
Is you CV on a web site or blog site you created? If so,how are schools finding you? Are you emailing schools and sending them your web address? Or are you using a different service? Thanks for the info

How is it going with TIE right now? Are people getting contacted by schools? Has anyone accepted a job recently (this recruiting season), with just using the TIE web site? Do you think schools are more likely to use TIE after the fairs are over?

You should be able to save quite a bit. Maybe even 30-40%, depending on your lifestyle. Viet Nam is pretty cheap. If you eat from street vendors, meals could be $2 or less. Travel around VN isn't too expensive either. We go with Air Asia when we travel, but the tax on plane tickets are often almost the same price of the ticket itself. Last summer, we took a 2 day, 1 night trip to Halong Bay. It included all meals,, travel to and from Halong Bay, we stayed in a 5 star hotel and had a private day long tour on the bay...about $100 each.

Anyway, I think you will be fine on that salary.

MagicJack works great 90% of the time. There's free voice mail that comes right to my email too. Once in a while the sound is a little low, but overall we are really pleased with it and glad we have it. I use it to call my friends and family just to say...log on to skype!

We emailed one of the teachers from our school, who gave us a list of things to bring. Some things are more expensive in certain countries than others. Ask someone who is already at the school.

Aside from some country specific things, we brought spices we like to cook with that weren't going to be available in our new country, teaching resources we couldn't live without, stuff for our hobbies that we like to do in our free time, and we renewed all our credit cards/licenses that were going to expire during the school year.

We bought MagicJack!! It's been a great way to communicate with our non-skype users.

QSI offers one year contracts.

I am kind of in that same situation, but I have some admin experience in the states, admin certification etc. Not much school site admin though (mostly program coordinator stuff). I am overseas now, as a teacher, but when we got into this gig I was hoping to step right into an admin post...at least asst principal. Almost everyone told me to get 2 years overseas experience as a teacher first, then apply. Maybe if I were a principal in the states first I would have had a better chance of landed an admin job right off.

I'm not so sure there will be tons more openings. A lot of people seem to be staying put this year. Last year our school had 6 or 7 openings...this year...none.

I don't think certain schools hire singles over other schools. It just depends what openings are available and where people fit into the system.

It's a new school, just opened. It's on the northern end of the island, not too far from the airport. New facilities, K-8th grade, about 60-70 students.

Health Insurance is good and covers everything. How you get to use the coverage is another story. It depends on which country you are in and how that country's medical system works. We have to pay out of pocket and then submit for reimbursement.
Plane tickets were purchased for us and sent to us.

I don't know enough about each individual school to give you an answer. I wouldn't base my decision on who the director is at a particular school. Just like teachers, directors can move around too. But, since there are so many locations and sizes of schools, you should use that as a guide. If you know you are not interested in living in central Asia (Kazakhstan etc) or know you might like China, then consider those schools only. Also, some of the QSI schools are quite small (50 students) or less. In those schools you won't be teaching one grade level or subject area. You may be doing more of an individualized teaching plan for each student. If that is not your thing, then try to go to a bigger school (with at least 100 students).

They usually give you a choice of locations, depending upon what is open. When we interviewed (a few years ago) they gave us a choice of 2 options. They like to hire couples, so both have to fit into the openings available at that particular school. You can apply to transfer after 2 years, but sometimes it's hard to transfer to your school/location of choice because it's dependent upon what is open at your desired location. The interview for us was just a discussion about QSI philosophy and locations. It seems, after they go over your application, check your references etc. that if they call you in for an interview, they have already decided to hire you. We are happy with QSI and will stay with them for a while. Good luck

That seems pretty harsh. We have to let our school know by xmas break and then if we change our minds and decide not to come back for the 11-12 school year, we forfeit our bonus.