Laim: Less than Lame!

JOB SITUATION UPDATE:

So... Starnberg is too far away. I sent the family an email being like, "I really liked you guys! But I can't travel 1.5 hours every day...(andalsoyourchildrenareincrediblyoverpriviliged)". That's one job down, and since I only had one left, it would seem that the decision is made.

Instead, it's just been made more complicated. Problem is, I am an interview addict.

Seriously -- why do I do this to myself? Twice this week I've woken up much earlier than necessary, put on like six coats of mascara, accidentally kicked stuff in our tiny apartment over and made my sleeping boyfriend go "nnngghhh" pathetically, scrawled down the U-Bahn directions to some place far away from everything I know, and run to the train station while rabidly eating some sort of carbohydrate.

Then I've walked into the establishment with trepidation. I've noted the decoration and attempted to observe key details like "Do the teachers look happy? Do they look well fed?", then I've shaken some hands, then I've listened, nodding, for a while.

And then... the decision.

One of the two interviews I went on this week was the second interview at the Kinderbetreuung (place to shove kids for the day). It was the "let's see if you do well in practice" interview; I spent half a day there, monitoring eating, changing diapers, playing board games.

Happily, it turned out that the children are not the dead little zombies I thought they were. Rather, they are adorable cuddly babies who want to tell me things -- loud, running, screaming cuddly babies, but still. One in particular, this little mocha-colored man named Otto, has a habit of non-sequiturs that's incredibly endearing. Sample conversation:

Teacher: Otto, what's your name?

Otto: Zwei! (Two!)

Teacher: No, Otto, your name. Who are you?

Otto: Ich putze meine Zahne! (I brush my teeth!)

It was all cute, and the four hours went by very quickly. And at the end of it all there was a conversation (finally sitting in big-people chairs) with the two women in the office, a talk in which they said, "We think you'll do fine here, and we're formally offering it to you", at which I was sort of "hurray" and sort of frozen. I asked if I could have until the end of the week to decide.

I don't know what stopped me from saying yes that day. I think it was the same things I'd had a problem with before -- that the job pays 800 euro a month (which is much, much less than any nanny makes), that it's far away, that it's early, that I don't feel very qualified for it.

But it was also something else combined with those other things -- it was the fact that, although I was to be hired as the English teacher, I spent so much of the day inadequately explaining things to children in German, feeling overwhelmed, swept up in it. Although it was "English Day!", the class sang one English song and then the rest of the day was "Zieh dich mal aus, bitte" and "Was hast du gesagt?" -- the place was far from bilingual, and so were the kids. Most of them spoke little to no English, and I couldn't see myself, a single person trying desperately to keep up with the wave of diaper-changing and feeding, changing that.

And then.

And then I got, that same day, an email back from the principal of Munich's only English-speaking Montessori school, asking me to come in for an interview the next morning at ten. Nervously, feeling as if I were cheating on the job I already had, I said yes.

If you're not familiar with the concept (I wasn't), a Montessori school believes that children learn most between 2.5 and 6; that formal instruction, in these periods, is silly; that the best way to teach children is through a series of self-selected games. Which sounds like hippie bullshit, but isn't.

I observed a classroom this morning, hovering creepily in the corner -- the Montessori philosophy demands that children receive no positive reinforcement from grownups when they complete a game (as I was informed after I'd excitedly wanted to help a tiny curly-haired girl complete a horsey puzzle -- informed, and given a handbook and a pencil to keep me busy). Rather, adults are there to answer questions and keep order; qualified teachers are there to teach one-on-one lesson games, games with numbers made of sandpaper and beads and mats.

The kids here may have been older than they were in the Kinderbetreuung, but the room was still amazingly quiet, the contrast evident -- the floors had no carpets, but no noise was echoing. Instead, the children were playing calmly; two boys built a massive tower out of wood blocks; a kid painted; one little boy was sitting in the corner, listening intently to a pair of headphones. It was like a science fiction book, like here was a group of children raised in a laboratory, reared from birth to use their supernatural intelligence for ill.

Now normally, as anyone who has seen my closet can attest, I am not a fan of order, but after the screaming poopy German chaos of the previous day, I was intrigued. These children were not only learning English -- they were learning math, and handwriting, and fine motor skills -- and all of that without hitting each other. No hitting at all!

Also, it didn't hurt that the teachers here looked cleaner, more Zenlike, better-dressed. Most of them had been there for multiple years; the girl who tipped me off to the job opening, Kerry, had worked there since 2004 and seemed none the worse for wear. "I'm doing this while I pursue my opera-singing career!" she said cheerfully in her Australian accent. I instantly wanted to be her friend.

When I heard (trying to act nonchalant) that the starting salary was more than comfortable and that the pauses in the school calendar were more than ample, I was hooked. Being cocky from my most recent job offer, I thought I had it made.

And then the principal, an ex-military man from Illinois who was like a loquacious cross between J.K. Simmons and my father, had to go be all aloof. "Well, you probably won't hear from me for a week or so," he said. "You're the first person we've interviewed, and next week I'll be talking to other candidates! Then we'll go into a second round."

I was shocked. How dare he? MY JOB!

I walked out feeling like I'd just auditioned for a musical -- sort of excited, sort of shaky, unable to wait until the cast list got posted. As I unlatched the cute little gate and walked out into the cold, I realized that now, I even-more didn't know what to do.

So, friends: is there some business way to string the first job offer along while I wait for word from the military man? Or should I say yes to it -- am I just being enchanted by the novelty of the second thing? Or should I give up on children entirely and just be a barista for the rest of my life? Or... or... or...

Damn options.