Mrs. Jill M. Dobbe - Kids, Camels, & Cairo

You want to move to another COUNTRY?! I gaped at Dan who was in the middle of cleaning leaves and dead rodents out of our backyard pool, a job he detested. What are you talking about?! I was suddenly concerned he was having a mid-life crisis.

Why not? We always talked about going abroad again. Im ready to leave the school politics and cold Wisconsin winters behind. I want to live in a hot, sunny climate again, work at a school where I can enjoy being an educator, and travel on the weekends. Lets just do it!

Really? I asked him incredulously. Just leave our jobs, sell our house, and pack our bags? Just like that?!

I was concerned that it was just another one of my husbands whims and afraid to get my hopes up, until he convinced me that he was dead serious. After giving the idea more consideration, I had to agree that it felt like the right thing to do-our jobs were unsatisfying, the house we bought six years ago was a money drain, and our son would soon be off to college. Nothing was standing in our way.

It wouldn't be our first time to go overseas. In June 2001, we returned to the U.S. after living abroad for ten adventurous years. During those years, we moved to four separate countries and taught in four different schools. With our one year old daughter, Ali, and two year old son, Ian, in tow, we moved first to Guam, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where we taught the children of the local islanders. That was also the year we survived our first hurricane as Yuri swept across the small island. We next ventured to Singapore, where Dan and I taught at an international school and Ian and Ali were immersed in the Chinese culture while attending a local daycare center.

Ghana, West Africa, was our third overseas home base. Ian and Ali attended the American school where Dan and I taught children from all across the world. During one of our school vacations, we traveled to a game park in South Africa where the four of us sat in the relative safety of an open-air jeep while a hungry pride of lions watched our every move. Five years after we left Ghana our family moved across the Atlantic Ocean to Guadalajara, Mexico. Ian and Ali entered their surly middle school years and took classes to become certified divers, swimming alongside dolphins and humpback whales.

After Mexico, we returned to the U.S. and threw ourselves into reverse culture shock. We reacquainted with family and friends, found jobs, bought a house, and settled into a typical American lifestyle. Ian and Ali grasped everything American as they entered their high school years, made new friends, passed their drivers tests, and played on the basketball teams. Dan and I accompanied the other parents and cheered aloud at games, chaperoned school dances, and watched Ian and Ali get through high school relatively unscathed.

The move abroad was a time of transition for all of us. While Dan and I made preparations, Ian graduated from high school and got ready for college. Ali had one year left so Dan and I invited, or, more like dragged, her overseas with us. She was stable and happy in our small Wisconsin town with a close group of friends always around her. Nonetheless, we planned to uproot her from a safe and secure lifestyle and place her in a foreign and unfamiliar environment. She was not exactly overjoyed, but was a good sport and went along with the plan. It was also our first time living so far away from Ian and we would no longer be travelling together as the fearless four. Our fears and doubts were the only things standing in the way of making it all happen.

Our lives were about to be turned upside down and the decision to venture overseas once more was not one we made lightly. Dan and I spent many sleepless nights discussing it-were we doing the right thing for our family? Would Ian be okay without us nearby? Will Ali be okay spending her senior year in a new school, without her friends? There were moments in our conversations when the move seemed too overwhelming and we went round and round discussing and arguing about it. But we always came back to our original idea of wanting to make it work.

While we packed up our household, we remembered all too well what we missed about the overseas life-the extensive travel, living with different cultures, and visiting famous worldly sites- was just a part of it. During our previous years, we also enjoyed the extra perks of tax free salaries, furnished housing, moving allowances, and complementary plane trips back to the U.S. Those perks made working abroad a fruitful, unique, and exciting lifestyle for all overseas teachers and administrators. We were excited to have it all again.

This time around, armed with newly obtained Masters degrees and three years of administrative experience, Dan and I applied for roles as school principals. We registered for a well-known overseas recruiting fair and in February 2007, flew to Boston to take part in interviews. The fair was held at the Cambridge Hyatt Hotel over a four-day period, and attended by two hundred and fifty American and international school representatives. Teachers and administrators from all over the world descended upon the fair with hopes of landing their dream job.

Prior to the hiring fair, I had set my sights on working at a school in Egypt. Egypt seemed exotic, and I was determined to visit the Pyramids of Giza and ride a camel one day. There was a school in Cairo that was looking to hire both an elementary and high school assistant principal; the perfect jobs for us. Dan and I wanted them, but after hearing from the school that they wouldnt be attending the fair, we looked elsewhere.

We arrived in Cambridge on a cold and dreary Friday in March. The bleak weather was the least of my concerns and that evening I joined the other educators for an informational session. I sat in the spacious room alongside experienced teachers and principals of all ages. Everyone around me seemed so confident and smug and I tried not to feel intimidated by their worldliness. After the thirty-minute pep talk, we left the room and walked en masse into another large conference room. School directors and superintendents attired in conventional business wear, with the occasional Indian sari and African head wrap on display, sat behind tables waiting to greet potential candidates. Large spaces behind each table were decorated with oversized posters displaying school names along with vacancies. Dan and I sidled up to a few tables to inquire about principal openings and to chat up the directors, hoping to make some contacts. We scheduled a few interviews for the next morning and went back to our hotel room, hoping the next day would bring success.

The first interview was scheduled for 9:00 a.m., and I woke feeling excited about what lay ahead. After I donned my one and only navy blue tailored suit, I checked myself in the mirror, and collected my briefcase. Dan gave me a quick good luck kiss and we left the room. With resumes in hand, we joined the throngs of smart-looking teachers and administrators already beginning their hunt for the perfect school and the perfect job.