Bangalore, India!

Our last post was a bit of a cliffhanger, but I can now divulge that we are indeed moving to India for the 2021/22 school year to teach at an international school in Bangalore.  After a fairly difficult recruiting process that involved a lot of interviews but few offers, we ended up having three schools that were interested in us.  This international school in Bangalore, one in Chengdu, China, and the other in Qingdao (also in China).

It was a difficult choice, but in the end, this was where we felt most comfortable.  Also, hearing rumors of some visa issues facing China again might mean that we have a little foresight in our choice.

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Why India?

To be totally honest, India was not even on our radar when we first started our search.  We were looking at Eastern Europe or a large city in Asia (Hong Kong or Singapore) as our first choice.  I suppose things tend to happen that way.  After all, Saudi Arabia was not on our radar the first time we decided to move abroad.

When looking for a new place, our first criteria is the quality of the school, not only for ourselves to work at but also for our kids.  Our new school is called the Canadian International School, Bangalore.  Their promotional video is pretty great:

We felt very comfortable during all of the conversations that we had with the various administrators during the hiring process. Moreover, now that we have signed, a number of staff members have reached out to us to lend support and give advice.  We even got to talk to the director of learning to find out more about the programs for Simon.  Also, there is a daycare on site for Alfie, at least until he starts school.  That was a big advantage for us.

Next, the fact that the school had positions for both of us and in the capacity that we wanted was a huge draw.  I spoke in the last post about how it was difficult finding schools that had positions for both of us. Not only did they have positions but in ones that we most desired.  Lindsey will be teaching Biology and I will be the IB Diploma Coordinator and teaching Global Politics.  I have wanted to get back into a coordinator role again.

Finally, while the schools in China had a lot of positives, we didn’t like the prospect of pollution, even though it has improved in China.  Bangalore is in the south of the country and has a higher elevation so it does not get as polluted as the north. Plus the travel links from Bangalore are pretty good.  KLM flies directly from Amsterdam and there are loads of flights to parts of Asia.  Also, there is going to be a lot of India and Sri Lanka that we will want to explore!

Any Reservations?

Not too many actually. We are excited about seeing a different part of the world that we have never been to.

Leaving Saudi, any other job would end up being a pay cut.  This was a pretty big one.  Luckily, we have been good with our money over the 4 years in Saudi.  And when we leave, we get a gratuity of half a month’s pay for each year we were here.  That means in May (our last paycheck) we will get 5 months’ salary each! (May, June, July, and two months gratuity).  Not too shabby!

Next steps

Obviously, we want to finish out our school year as efficiently as we can.  Hopefully, we can get the COVID vaccine while we are here, especially for traveling!  Also, we need to think about packing up to move.  I have contacted some shipping companies, and we have already started getting rid of a lot of our stuff.  We need to sell some of it off (including our car). We want to try to make sure that we are relaxed enough and enjoy the remaining time we have here with the friends we have made. Plus it will be pool weather really soon!