A Long Weekend in December?

On Thursday afternoon I officially quit my job at Beales. I told my department manager, Sue, that I was leaving on the 19th of December and then I handed in my formal letter of resignation to the Human Resources office. Most of my co-workers seemed upset that I was leaving - but when I explained why I was leaving everyone was supportive. We're living over here to visit new places and see things we've never seen before. I had a really shitty Christmas experience the year I was in Australia, and I don't want this year to suck. We figure that we can deal with the possiblity of both of us being jobless for a little bit in the New Year if that's the cost of enjoying ourselves to the fullest while in Europe.

Then on Friday, in a surprising turn of events, my new floor manager Paul came to me with an interesting offer. Apparently, Beales is willing to make an exception and let me have two weeks holiday over Christmas if I agree to come back to work in January. Also, he asked if I had any other upcoming travel plans, so I told him about our trip to Italy in February for Carnivalè. Paul said that wouldn't be a problem and he'd make sure I could have as much time as I wanted off then, as well. This is crazy: the man has been my boss for four days and already he's willing to bend over backwards for me - an employee he knows is only staying with the company for a year at most.

Oh well - now I get to go to Spain with-out having to worry about possible unemployment in January - and I'll get paid for it: three of the days I have off are bank (pay-for-not-working) holidays in England. Now that I'm staying longer I'm entitled to more paid holiday days too, so they might pay me for every day I'm off.

Also, the Teacher placement agency that found Troë the job at Rossmore called on Thursday to tell her that a full time teacher position opened up in the Bournemouth area for the January-April semester. It's teaching girls gym, coincidentally, at the same school Troë's soccer team practices at. She's applied for the position, but we won't know anything for at least a couple of days.

And on top of all of that, I have a long weekend this weekend: we were originally going to London for Saturday/Sunday/Monday for a teaching conference for Troë, so I pulled some strings to get the time off. But now that Troë is leaving Rossmore, she's no longer going to the conference. So now we get to spend the whole weekend together (a rarity for sure).

After the stress of the last few weeks, things are definitely looking quite good for us right now.