Post travels and Job hunt 4/1/14-4/9/14

After a month and a half of traveling we were back home in Chiang Mai. Going back to Chiang Mai was a strange reminder that we were actually living in Thailand, not just on vacation. It was fun to be back in a place of familiarity. Within the short time we were gone, we noticed many changes;new construction, more businesses, changes in whether and a decrease in the number of tourists. Our main focus now was finding a job. I must admit I thought I would feel sad that our travels were over, but I was even more excited to do what I love; teaching. That's the beauty of loving what you do, it doesn't feel like work.The transition from traveling to moving back to Chiang Mai was an easy one. We decided to keep things simple, by renting an apartment at our old place. The move was temporary, since we didn't know what school we would be working at or what part of town. Once we were settled in to our room, we made our first stop to text and talk. At school we received our teaching degrees from Moz and talked to him about possible jobs. He gave us valuable advice for applying to jobs, and told us that he might have a few available for us, but wouldn't know for another week. We thanked him for his help and headed back to our apartment to update our resumes and search for online job postings.For the next few days we walked around the city dropping off our resumes at as many schools we could find. It was hit and miss; some schools told us they weren't hiring, while others had us fill out applications, and told us they would contact us. Although we heard from a few people that getting a teaching job in Chiang Mai was difficult due to the competitiveness, we weren't worried. After a few days of job searching we received a call from Moz telling us that there were two jobs available at Regina, the all girls catholic school that we substituted for in January. He said the positions were ours if we wanted them.We gratefully accepted. I would be teaching health to students in first through sixth grade, and Ryan would be teaching English to first, second, third and sixth graders. We were overjoyed by the news. The next day we went to school to sign some paperwork and get our passports photocopied to start the work visa application process. Moz said that it would take a few weeks to hear back from the board of education, and once we got the letter of approval we would need to make a trip to Laos to get our work permits.We were about to leave when Moz told us that if the paperwork didn't come back within the next two weeks we would have to make sure we didn't over stay our tourist visa. We told him that we weren't worried because we had six month tourists visas and they weren't up until July. He looked at us with confusion and asked to see our passports again. With a worried tone of voice and a look of shock, he pointed to our passport stamps and told us we were suppose to leave Thailand on March 1st. My heart sunk. What do you mean we were suppose to leave the country March first? It was now April 9th, what do we do? What are the consequences of staying past our due date? A million questions raced through our minds. Moz could sense our panic and told us to take a seat. He said that we needed to take care of the issue immediately. If we came in contact with the police at all and they found out we had an overstayed visa we would be taken to jail and deported back to the US.  He called Aom who use to work at the immigration center, and had her talk to the office asking what we should do. When he got off the phone he told us that we would need to pay a fine of 500 baht a day, for each day that our visa was over due. We were over due by 40 days, which meant that each of us would have to pay 20,000 baht ( $625). In order to pay this fine we would need to take a bus to the town of Mesiah, on the border of Thailand and Burma, and bring 40,000 baht in cash with us. Once there we would need to go to the border crossing and pay our fine, cross the border into Burma, get our passports stamped, and walk back into Thailand. I took a deep breath and sat in silence for a minute processing the information. All of this was so sudden. I couldn't believe we had been walking around illegally for the past forty days. We were so lucky that we didn't have a run in with the police, otherwise we would be in jail. Looking  back we had a few close encounters, like the motorbike incident, or when we were on the bus to Khao Sok and  a police officer came on board to check everyone's id, but decided to bypass us. My heart skipped a beat at the thought of how close we were to being deported. Here in Thailand if you are past your visa by one day, and a police officer finds out, you can go to jail and be deported. On the other hand, if you voluntarily go to immigration office and admit to overstaying your visa, you will most likely be charged a fine, and not taken to jail, unfortunately, it all depends on the mood of the person working at border, and tomorrow that someone will determine our fate.....