LA Interview with Amity

Sup All,

I'll post about my weekend in LA. Oh man.

Friday 15th: Flight left Honolulu at 6:40am. That was really early.....got into LA around 3:30PMish. Got the free shuttle to the hotel and got settled there. I walked around the area and to the interview building so that I knew where it was. Worked out at the hotel gym and went to bed early.

Saturday 16th: Well I didn't sleep that well because I was nervous. Went to Starbucks and had a banana and coffee. The doors opened at 8am and the Info session was going to start at 8:30, if you are late you weren't allowed to enter. So, I was running a little late because I was having a hard time getting into the building. I had to walk around to get to another entrance. I finally get in and I was telling the security personal what suite I needed to go to, and he said that 2 other people had come just before me asking to go to the same place, but no one was up there. So that office building/complex is closed on the weekends. I was thinking wtf! there is no way that this company is not legit. I was freaking out. So I went back to the hotel because there wasn't anything that I could do there. I kept calling and calling the office. Finally I got in-touch with someone at 12:30pm after they had finished the group interview. I told her what happened, I had confirmed my attendance at the beginning of September. They had actually changed the location because they couldn't fit everyone in the office. And I wasn't notified of the change. Apparently they didn't respond to my confirmation, and then the lady I was talking goes, this is unacceptable, you should have responded back after not hearing from us for a month. Geezes fucking christ lady, how was I supposed to know I was supposed to receive another confirmation. It kind of was my fault, but really bad on their part as well. So she was like, can you come back in December.... ummmm...NO...I came all the way from HAWAII! So she put me on hold, and they let me come in the next day at 9am.
So I chilled at the hotel, she said I was allowed to change my lesson plan for one child, but I really couldn't have.
I didn't sleep well again that night, and I didn't really have an appetite.

Sunday 17th: So went to the 9am interview. Another guy who had showed up to the wrong place as well was there. He didn't even confirm, so I don't even know why they let him in. We had an info session, they basically explained a lot of stuff. Expectations, a video with some teaching demos, what the company is like. I took notes which was really useful because in later in the personal interview she asked me some stuff and I was allowed to use my notes.
We had to do the 5min. teaching demo. I thought it went alright considering there was only one child and it was supposed to be a game for at least 3 kids. After this we took an English test. There was spelling part, fill in the blanks and circling wrong tenses in a sentence. The spelling part was actually really hard for me. My spelling is really bad. But I guess I did alright on the other parts.
So they invited me to the personal interview right after. I waited for like 15mins in the lobby.
At the personal interview we talked about my lesson plan. They were kind of disappointed and it was of low standards.....They told me that I should use more gestures, less wordy words that are unnecessary, being a little more excited, and actually teach. Then they made me do a 10min teaching lesson, they had flashcards prepared and a photo. The vocab cards included words like paper, tape, string, ribbon, glue, paint. The sentence/question grammar that I was supposed to teach was : He/she has some ____. / What does he/she have ____? I had to plan a 30min lesson plan and teach 10mins of it.
So I used gestures for each vocab. I went over the vocab. Somehow during the lesson, I would say the word and then the child (the interviewer) would say the exact same thing. So we went through the cards a few times and the picture, point to things. I was supposed to some how differentiate the difference between He and She as well. Anyway, the 10min lesson just got worse and worse. I don't know why but I even added I and You; I have paper. Yeah....hott mess.
So after the 10mins we discussed how that teaching demo went. She was pissed that I added stuff, and then I realized that I was using the wrong sentence pattern too. I was using He/She has ____, but it was supposed to be He/She has some ____. And then I got kind of lectured why I have to stick to the lesson and not change things, because they also have take home worksheets and stuff, and if I don't teach the correct pattern then they won't know how to do the work. OMG this lady was so fucking bitchy.
She asked lots of questions. What I would do in certain scenarios, etc. I was so nervous....and taking a while to give my answers. I probably didn't really express very clearly what I was trying to say either....but hopefully I said some good stuff that will offset my teaching demo failures.
Its going to take a few weeks for them to respond. Its going to be really hard to say. I will be really surprised it if they hire me, and I can see them not hiring me as well. The whole interview makes me feel really discouraged now. I thought I would like that company because it was specifically for children and stuff, but they seem so rigid. Ah.
So I'm kind of bummed that it went very poorly. It kind of made me want to go back to Borders. Borders is getting a lot better. The GM doesn't yell at me that much anymore. She was off for a week too, so maybe that's why things were starting to feel better. But yeah, I thought I had a lot of pressure from Borders, I feel like I'd be getting even more pressure at this company. Idk. We'll see what happens.

So after I went back to the hotel; the interviews finished around 1:30. I was going to try to meet up with Nick, but actually his dad was in town too. I was surprised because he didn't tell me till then. Had a late lunch and bought one of those JOOSE drinks. That stuff tasted terrible. But after drinking half of it was pretty drunk/sloppy. Then Nick texts me asking if I wanted to go to dinner with them. Like omg....I'm fucking drunk already...and awkward....
Anyway they picked me up, I sobered up, and we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. That was actually the first time I'd like ever talked to his dad. It wasn't that bad and some of the convo was interesting. Went back to the hotel and Nick stated for a few hours. Don't worry, nothing happened. We just watched TV and youtube videos on my laptop. Now that I'm reflecting on this though....I somewhat felt really at ease when I was with him. Kind of felt like I could forget the world. After Nick left I drank the rest of that JOOSE, bad idea. That shit made me hung over and nauseous. NEVER AGAIN will I drink that shit. I was planing to go to the gym but I couldn't.

Monday, flew back to Honolulu. I work tomorrow at 7am.
Not sure how I feel about wanting to teach in Japan anymore. I always thought I wanted to work in Japan, but this interview process like is really turning me off. Maybe its just this company though. I really liked working/teaching the kids at that Japanese camp in Minnesota, but this seems completely different. Starting to wonder if I should go back and try to pursue music any further or figure out what else I can do.