part time jobs, and more dog park adventures

I normally don't write much about my jobs, but here's a little bit about what I've got going on nowadays income-wise:

I'm helping out the school in Daegu where I taught in 2006-2007 and again in 2010-2011, by conducting Skype interviews with several of the candidates. This is the first time I've ever participated in the interviewing portion of the hiring process from the point of view of an interviewer. I've certainly been interviewed before, and I've helped previous employers review resumes and applications in order to decide who to interview, but this is my first time doing the interviewing. Some of the candidates have fallen in the good-to-great category; others have fallen in the I'm-not-surprised-you're-unemployed category. Ways to fall into the latter category include:

Exhibit A: Responding to a request for a resume and cover letter with a smartass reply about how you're tired of submitting cover letters and not getting hired, and so therefore you're sending only a resume.

Exhibit B: Not being online at the scheduled time of your Skype interview, then showing up online thirty minutes late with the excuse of "I don't know what happened. I've been online all this time." No, buddy, you hadn't been. 

Still, I've been impressed with most of the people I've interviewed, which means the school will most likely get a pretty kickass teacher to replace the one who will be leaving this fall.

Additionally, I've got two jobs through the university where I'll be studying (classes begin next week). The first job is an assistantship, which I'll hold all year. It's part time, twenty hours a week. At this point I know very little about what I'm doing - although I do know that I won't be teaching.

The other job is super-super-part-time, just a few hours each semester. However, as it pays $30/hr, I figure that's a productive way to spend a few hours every now and then! I'm helping to rate the spoken English communication levels of potential TAs from non-English-speaking countries. (While all the potential foreign TAs have passed the TOEFL, that doesn't mean they're great at speaking English. I've taught a lot of students who are great at reading/writing/listening/test taking in English, but who can barely communicate orally. The goal is to prevent those folks from getting placed in charge of an English-language lecture or lab  section.)  It's a lot more challenging than I expected, and I can't exactly say that I'm enjoying it, but it doesn't take too much of my time, and it will help to pay the bills.

Other than that, I've pretty much just been spending my time lounging around the house and taking Mochi to the dog park. My poor boy is nowhere near as socialized as he should be, either with humans or with other dogs. He gets sooooo excited when we arrive at the dog park, but once we get inside, he totally goes all shy on me. You know the typical dog-wants-to-play stance? (If not, here are some examples from Google image search: here, here, and here.) Well, when a dog approaches Mochi and goes through the whole do-you-wanna-play routine... Mochi just stands there looking worried. Eventually, the dog will give up and go play with someone else. When a dog run towards Mochi in an I-wanna-play manner, Mochi cringes. When a dog sniffs Mochi, often he just stands there looking worried, although sometimes he'll return the sniff. When a dog humps him, he just cringes, but otherwise doesn't move. If he didn't get so excited every time the car pulls into the dog park, I'd stop taking him, because it stresses me out to watch him look so uncomfortable. I'm hoping he'll get better at relating to other dogs, but I guess we'll have to see.

OMG - He's sniffing me! I'll just stand still until he leaves.
Pommie here is in love with Mochi. He's a regular at the park (very outgoing, super-friendly, always jumps in my lap), but he has totally fallen for Mo and wants nothing more out of life than to be able to hump him like mad. Mochi is sooo not into this. Luckily, Pommie's owner is pretty good about keeping him under control.
This dog... is NOT Mochi! She sure looks a lot like him though, doesn't she? Her name is Angel. She was also super shy around both humans and other dogs, so I wasn't able to get a good photo. Still, her owner and I were pretty amazed by how similarly they were built and colored.