{"id":2020,"date":"2012-09-05T13:43:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T20:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2012-09-07T15:17:01","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T22:17:01","slug":"itching-to-speak-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/2012\/09\/05\/itching-to-speak-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Itching to Speak English"},"content":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning with a simple plan for the day that involved getting my flight medical reissued and getting a test scheduled<\/em> to prove I can speak English. As is usually the case, things didn’t go as planned. \u00a0Now, I’m sitting waiting to take the English proficiency exam in a shirt I bought off the street and I’m itching all over. A few years ago I would have been surprised at how this day turned out, but somehow I feel absolutely zero shock and can even laugh a little as I think about how it came to this.<\/p>\n

When I went to schedule my exam today the man behind the counter stamped my application with “1pm”. I originally figured I would have one week notice to get my paperwork in order. AS I thought through what it meant to make a 1pm test appointment on the far side of the Manila international airport I couldn’t help but feel like I was in “The Amazing Race.”<\/p>\n

Now I had 3 hours to get ID photos taken, an application filled out, photo copies made of my licenses and passport, get a dress shirt and somehow get my passport in my possession and sign in early for the test. It doesn’t sound like much but you have to understand that I was at the Manila International Airport and all these errands need to be accomplished all across Manila. Any one of these things could take the entire 3 hours – you just never know what will happen.<\/p>\n

With the help of one our friends at the NTM office who met me at the testing center and hand delivered my passport I was able to get everything accomplished except the shirt. I was wearing a nice, company polo shirt but when I saw the look on the proctor’s face I knew it wasn’t going to pass the dress code. With only a few minutes remaining before test time, I ran down the street to a little thrift store and bought the least stained and biggest shirt I could find. In the end I look way worse than I did in the polo shirt and this one itches something awful. It meets the dress code though, and in a few minutes I’ll be called in to prove that I can talk good English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning with a simple plan for the day that involved getting my flight medical reissued and getting a test scheduled to prove I can speak English. As is usually the case, things didn’t go as planned. \u00a0Now, I’m sitting waiting to take the English proficiency exam in a shirt I bought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[125,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-culture","category-ministry","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}