Summer come and gone

 So last I wrote here was back in May when about to go to Book Expo for a week and for a Wiley interview. The interview didn't pan out, although I thought it was an alright interview. What probably got me was the editorial test and email test afterwards, as well as the fact that the appointment confirmation window was set to Pacific Standard Time, so when I thought the appointment was at 10 AM it was actually at 1 PM. 

I will say that the food canteen at Wiley was lovely, as was everyone else when they realized what the error was. 

Since that time, I worked as a Summer English teacher at Education First- Santa Barbara, an international English language company whose standardized tests are well-regarded and I taught Cambridge English according to the CEFR standards. It was a really intense two months where I worked full time as a language instructor for the upper 10 to 1 Percent European and East Asian teenagers and young adults. There were a few weeks where there were a large influx of French, Italian, and Japanese students coming in for a couple of weeks, which was pretty intense given that even when they were sorted into B2 English they still have varied abilities in reading, writing, and speaking skills. There were some tough classes, and then I had one really great class, but man that summer was a real ringer. 

Since the summer gig is done, I'm just there as a substitute teacher so that means not a lot of shifts going my way afterwards. 

The past couple of weeks, I was in Paris because my best friend from college got hitched to her Frenchman, for EU visa purposes, and so I was there not only for the cozy ceremony but also as a family buffer as that would be the first time her mother and sister left the country to go abroad and there's been known tension between my BF and her mom. It was all-in-all a good time, though it got me doing some hard thinking about the future and what my next plan will be. Should I make a go for New York anyway, get a job to support myself while being in the community of publishers and writers? It's not as if I don't have family there who thought that it would be a good idea for me to be there, but like any endeavor I try to do, it all comes down to money and skills that I may or may not have.