Interviewing and Uruguay
Oy! Bug bites, more and more bug bites. At least these ones aren’t huge, they’re tiny little ones…a bunch of tiny little ones. Not as bad as some infamous flea fiascos I’ve had in the past, but these aren’t particularly delightful. 55 at last count… that big red spot on my leg? Oh yeah, mosquito bite the size of my palm. Whoooo!
Let’s see, so where do I even begin…let’s start with the interview. It’s still in process. It all began when I took my cookies into the office (I just nearly wrote awfice—do you think that signifies something???) with cookies. P.S. (yes, a post-script right in the middle of a paragraph!) AWESOME idea. I have since found out that I am now known as the cookie girl. How could they not hire the cookie girl? Exactly. I’d had quite enough of the waiting game, so I bit the bullet and went in. Unfortunately, the person that I really needed to talk to wasn’t in the office, but I did manage to schedule a phone interview (the first step in the interview process) with him the next day. I spent the hour before the phone interview dashing about from locutorio (internet café) to locutorio looking for a place that had internet for the right price (yet again, being stupid and compromising for approximately 33 cents) and then when I finally found a place I thought was good and spent 20 minutes or so there, I found out that the printer didn’t work. I definitely thought it would be the best idea to have hard copies of the job description as well as my resume and references in the phone booth when I made the call, but the printer defied me! And so the search began, yet again, for a good locutorio. I walked for blocks and blocks, and upon discovering a nice-looking place that appeared as though it would have a speedy connection, I was rejected yet again—full! Shit. 15 minutes and counting, and I slowly found myself walking further and further away from tourist land, the only place sure to be full of the world wide web. Por fin, I found a place that had available computers, USB ports (also important and not always to be found), a printer, and phone booths. Score! With 10 minutes to print my pages and quickly study the website, I finally found my office for the day. Following this last-minute dash for preparedness began the phone call, which didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped. I was prepared to talk about my work experience, Spanish level, education, their company…but what I didn’t anticipate was questions about my permanence in Buenos Aires. When they found out that I had only been in Buenos Aires for a week and was staying in a hostel (aka: no permanent apartment nor current enrollment in Spanish classes), they were pretty dismissive. They asked how long I was looking to stay in Buenos Aires and to work at the job, and I told them that initially I would be looking at one year. I mean, I would only give a one year commitment for any job, regardless of location. That was certainly not what they wanted to hear, and they said that for the executive assistant position they were looking to hire for immediately, they were looking for at least a two year commitment. However, they informed me that they’re hiring for multiple positions, multiple executive assistant positions even, and that he’d send me a few of the job descriptions and then he’d call me again at the end of the following week to regroup and look at where else I might fit (this was a Tuesday, by the way). I figured that gave me about a week to go frolicking about in Uruguay.
New friend Courtney and I bought our tickets on Wednesday (after I got my Brazilian visa!) and that night I made another batch of cookies for the hostel friends (they were so good, and easily my best batch here in South America, oh praises) which was delicious apart from the unbearable heat. As if the day hadn’t been hot enough, the oven went ahead and made it that much more hot. I was melting in the kitchen (and making everyone else in the room swelter), when lo and behold a beautiful gray-clouded, frequently thundering storm rolled in. I couldn’t take it, I had to go outside and play in the rain, and was followed by a few other friends. We danced, bathed and delighted in the rain and wind until we got so cold we couldn’t stay outside any longer. It was easily my best night in BA.
The next morning, Courtney and I wended our way to Montevideo from ferry to bus to taxi to hostel. We walked around the pedestrian street in Montevideo a little bit, if only to get food, and then went back to the hostel for a nap. Let me inform you that 9:00 pm naps aren’t very effective if you want to actually wake up again. So I slept until about 10:00 am the next day. : ) The next day was much more productive, though, and we managed to rent bikes and ride along the beaches in Montevideo and through the city a bit.
We made a two hour stop on one of the beaches to relax and eat, and although I had brought sun block neither of us thought to use it. That is, until Courtney realized that she was burning. The thing about that is, is that once you can see the sun burn (and you’re still outside in the sun), it’s really just the beginning. You know there’s more coming. I thought I had gotten off pretty easily and that my skin was more adjusted to the sun than hers, but that was just dumb. I put sun block on my knees (which strangely enough was the only part that was appearing to be burned at the time and ended up being the most painful of all the burns I was to receive), but nowhere else. Bad idea! When we got back to our hostel that night, we were in pain, burned, scarlet pain! Lotion was applied every few minutes, to the point where I had little lotion balls appearing every time I tried to put more on. Not as helpful. Here’s a little idea of the burn I got:
Nice, huh? Too bad, especially considering that the next day we were headed out to Punta del Este, the beach resort town. My beach, my beach, how I’ll miss thee! We went out that night with some new Brazilian friends from the hostel (easily the nicest, most genuine group of Brazilian boys I’ve met so far), and then caught a bus to Punta the following day. We made it out to our hostel, which was quite nice though much more than I’ve paid for any other hostels since being in South America. It was also a nice little trek away from the main road (and the beach). That particular night we hung out with some Irish boys and had the intention of going out to the clubs and yet never ended up making it out of the hostel (something that seems to be a pretty common occurrence!). That night (Saturday night) while adding new friends on Facebook, I found that I had an email from the company. They wanted me to come in on Monday at 6:30 pm for an interview. Well, I guess that cuts the Uruguay trip short! The next day I bought a combination of tickets that would drop me off back in BA at 1:00 pm on Monday afternoon. The rest of the day was spent wandering around attempting to find aloe vera and St. Ives lotion for a reasonable price, but since this was a resort town, reasonable prices (as in prices cheaper than US prices) were not to be found, so we sucked it up and paid the price to heal the skin.
My trip back to BA was long enough and I was pretty exhausted upon arriving back at the hostel, but I spent the time in between arrival and interview looking up working visa information, studying the company, and preparing to look prepared. With the “interview outfit”, a loaned folder containing additional copies of all my paperwork, and a loaned businessy black leather messenger bag, I was ready. The interview was a success, I do believe, with the enduring yellow flag being my “impermanent” status. So the next day I began the remedy by buying a local Argentinean cell phone which I still don’t really understand. I got a phone call tonight from a friend in Brazil which totally drained my prepaidness, though I was under the impression that all incoming calls were free for me. Lies, mentiras! One step at a time I will begin to understand…
Anyhew, at this point I’m waiting to hear back from the company to hear whether I’ve made it to the next step in the interview process. I was told that there are office efficiency-type tests, more interviews, and a meeting with an occupational therapist in their interview process. Interesting, to be sure! Now I find myself waiting around, once again, biding my time with a bit of apartment hunting (though I won’t be looking to move into an apartment for another three weeks, after I get back from Brazil) and yet more reading and writing. I’ve gotta be productive somehow!
Let’s see, so where do I even begin…let’s start with the interview. It’s still in process. It all began when I took my cookies into the office (I just nearly wrote awfice—do you think that signifies something???) with cookies. P.S. (yes, a post-script right in the middle of a paragraph!) AWESOME idea. I have since found out that I am now known as the cookie girl. How could they not hire the cookie girl? Exactly. I’d had quite enough of the waiting game, so I bit the bullet and went in. Unfortunately, the person that I really needed to talk to wasn’t in the office, but I did manage to schedule a phone interview (the first step in the interview process) with him the next day. I spent the hour before the phone interview dashing about from locutorio (internet café) to locutorio looking for a place that had internet for the right price (yet again, being stupid and compromising for approximately 33 cents) and then when I finally found a place I thought was good and spent 20 minutes or so there, I found out that the printer didn’t work. I definitely thought it would be the best idea to have hard copies of the job description as well as my resume and references in the phone booth when I made the call, but the printer defied me! And so the search began, yet again, for a good locutorio. I walked for blocks and blocks, and upon discovering a nice-looking place that appeared as though it would have a speedy connection, I was rejected yet again—full! Shit. 15 minutes and counting, and I slowly found myself walking further and further away from tourist land, the only place sure to be full of the world wide web. Por fin, I found a place that had available computers, USB ports (also important and not always to be found), a printer, and phone booths. Score! With 10 minutes to print my pages and quickly study the website, I finally found my office for the day. Following this last-minute dash for preparedness began the phone call, which didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped. I was prepared to talk about my work experience, Spanish level, education, their company…but what I didn’t anticipate was questions about my permanence in Buenos Aires. When they found out that I had only been in Buenos Aires for a week and was staying in a hostel (aka: no permanent apartment nor current enrollment in Spanish classes), they were pretty dismissive. They asked how long I was looking to stay in Buenos Aires and to work at the job, and I told them that initially I would be looking at one year. I mean, I would only give a one year commitment for any job, regardless of location. That was certainly not what they wanted to hear, and they said that for the executive assistant position they were looking to hire for immediately, they were looking for at least a two year commitment. However, they informed me that they’re hiring for multiple positions, multiple executive assistant positions even, and that he’d send me a few of the job descriptions and then he’d call me again at the end of the following week to regroup and look at where else I might fit (this was a Tuesday, by the way). I figured that gave me about a week to go frolicking about in Uruguay.
New friend Courtney and I bought our tickets on Wednesday (after I got my Brazilian visa!) and that night I made another batch of cookies for the hostel friends (they were so good, and easily my best batch here in South America, oh praises) which was delicious apart from the unbearable heat. As if the day hadn’t been hot enough, the oven went ahead and made it that much more hot. I was melting in the kitchen (and making everyone else in the room swelter), when lo and behold a beautiful gray-clouded, frequently thundering storm rolled in. I couldn’t take it, I had to go outside and play in the rain, and was followed by a few other friends. We danced, bathed and delighted in the rain and wind until we got so cold we couldn’t stay outside any longer. It was easily my best night in BA.
The next morning, Courtney and I wended our way to Montevideo from ferry to bus to taxi to hostel. We walked around the pedestrian street in Montevideo a little bit, if only to get food, and then went back to the hostel for a nap. Let me inform you that 9:00 pm naps aren’t very effective if you want to actually wake up again. So I slept until about 10:00 am the next day. : ) The next day was much more productive, though, and we managed to rent bikes and ride along the beaches in Montevideo and through the city a bit.
We made a two hour stop on one of the beaches to relax and eat, and although I had brought sun block neither of us thought to use it. That is, until Courtney realized that she was burning. The thing about that is, is that once you can see the sun burn (and you’re still outside in the sun), it’s really just the beginning. You know there’s more coming. I thought I had gotten off pretty easily and that my skin was more adjusted to the sun than hers, but that was just dumb. I put sun block on my knees (which strangely enough was the only part that was appearing to be burned at the time and ended up being the most painful of all the burns I was to receive), but nowhere else. Bad idea! When we got back to our hostel that night, we were in pain, burned, scarlet pain! Lotion was applied every few minutes, to the point where I had little lotion balls appearing every time I tried to put more on. Not as helpful. Here’s a little idea of the burn I got:Nice, huh? Too bad, especially considering that the next day we were headed out to Punta del Este, the beach resort town. My beach, my beach, how I’ll miss thee! We went out that night with some new Brazilian friends from the hostel (easily the nicest, most genuine group of Brazilian boys I’ve met so far), and then caught a bus to Punta the following day. We made it out to our hostel, which was quite nice though much more than I’ve paid for any other hostels since being in South America. It was also a nice little trek away from the main road (and the beach). That particular night we hung out with some Irish boys and had the intention of going out to the clubs and yet never ended up making it out of the hostel (something that seems to be a pretty common occurrence!). That night (Saturday night) while adding new friends on Facebook, I found that I had an email from the company. They wanted me to come in on Monday at 6:30 pm for an interview. Well, I guess that cuts the Uruguay trip short! The next day I bought a combination of tickets that would drop me off back in BA at 1:00 pm on Monday afternoon. The rest of the day was spent wandering around attempting to find aloe vera and St. Ives lotion for a reasonable price, but since this was a resort town, reasonable prices (as in prices cheaper than US prices) were not to be found, so we sucked it up and paid the price to heal the skin.
My trip back to BA was long enough and I was pretty exhausted upon arriving back at the hostel, but I spent the time in between arrival and interview looking up working visa information, studying the company, and preparing to look prepared. With the “interview outfit”, a loaned folder containing additional copies of all my paperwork, and a loaned businessy black leather messenger bag, I was ready. The interview was a success, I do believe, with the enduring yellow flag being my “impermanent” status. So the next day I began the remedy by buying a local Argentinean cell phone which I still don’t really understand. I got a phone call tonight from a friend in Brazil which totally drained my prepaidness, though I was under the impression that all incoming calls were free for me. Lies, mentiras! One step at a time I will begin to understand…
Anyhew, at this point I’m waiting to hear back from the company to hear whether I’ve made it to the next step in the interview process. I was told that there are office efficiency-type tests, more interviews, and a meeting with an occupational therapist in their interview process. Interesting, to be sure! Now I find myself waiting around, once again, biding my time with a bit of apartment hunting (though I won’t be looking to move into an apartment for another three weeks, after I get back from Brazil) and yet more reading and writing. I’ve gotta be productive somehow!
Comments
I'm glad you're having fun, but I miss you dearly. I'm glad you're continuing to bake cookies; I made some last week with the peanut butter-chocolate swirl chips and thought of how Abby and I devoured almost an entire bag of them at your apartment, so so long ago.
Love you!
I enjoyed reading your blog and catching up on your doings. You are living the life (la vida loca?) and are in your element. And I have experienced the joy of Tina cookies. Oh those lucky South Americans.
Hope all is well! Now, don't do the sunburn thing again! Slip, slap, slop! (Slip on a t-shirt, slap on a hat, and slop on some sunscreen! Thus sayeth the American Cancer Society!)
Love to you!
Jen