Well, it's been an overwhelming summer. Emotionally speaking. But all's well that ends well.
A couple of weeks ago I received my pink slip in the mail. At last.
And later that night that I received a phone call rescinding that decision.
We made enough political noise that someone got embarrassed, we'll never know who, and the decision got changed, just like that.
We only have funding for one year so it'll be an uphill battle but I'm cautiously optimistic that more time, we'll find a longer term solution.
Once I finally found out... I was so happy and relieved.
And then the next day I was disappointed.
Mostly now, though, on balance, I'm happy. I'm finally resting my brain and actually enjoying the summer, now that I don't have all that ambivalence. It was so hard to live my life, not knowing what would come next. I was trying to take an online class on building niche websites -- which ate up every moment of free time -- and keeping a scathing eye on my apartment, trying to see where I could declutter and prepare for staging my apartment (if I moved to Mexico I would rent out my apartment). And in between, I was trying to think about schools in Mexico, and medical insurance here and abroad, and car storage versus selling my car (aka my dead mother's car so a more emotionally weighty decision). And a million other tiny decisions.
I also, to my surprise, had a phone interview for a possible job in Mexico. She's not quite ready to hire yet (and obviously I wasn't ready to commit to moving to Mexico!) and it wouldn't be my dream job (or my dream salary) but it might be a good option for at least a while. So I'm keeping that in the back of my mind.
But for now, I keep dreaming ahead to the time when both my children attend the same school in Brooklyn and (fingers crossed) I work in the same building and my childcare bill drops to practically nothing. I imagine I'll feel terribly liberated. We shall see.
And if I end up losing my job at the end of this school year... I hope I'll take the plunge and move to Mexico then. But really, I think my ideal time to go would be the middle school years. When my children are done with this amazing school I think I'll feel much more unmoored.
Whether my children will want to move to another country with me by then is an open question. I'm not wildly optimistic.
In the meantime, I hope we will go back to Mexico next summer for a longer visit, and maybe even send the girls to summer camp there for a couple of weeks. They're doing Spanish immersion camp right here in Brooklyn and it seems great but with lots of little English speaking children around them, they're clearly not learning as fast as they would in a Spanish-only environment. Of course, they might have a lot less fun if they felt totally over their heads in that sort of environment.
Congrats on the job funding coming through! Though it sounds like there was some excitement about Mexico, from what you say, the timing would be better later. My sister and brother and now niece and nephew are in a bilingual school and are speaking really well.
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