ITP - 98: McGregors in Saudi

Greg: Hey, welcome to another episode of the ITP.

Kent: I'm Kent the cat guy. I'm bringing this in. I want to say good morning to JP Mint. Hey, JP.

JP: Hello. Good morning from Mexico.

Kent: I would like to now bring in Greg, the single guy. Good evening, Greg. How you doing?

Greg: How you doing, Kent? Good to be here.

Kent: So good to be here. And I'd like to now bring in our special guests coming in all the way from the desert a couple miles away. Welcome, Anna and Cam. Come on in, Anna and Cam.

Anna: Thank you. It's good to be here. It's good to chat with you guys.

Greg: Thanks for being here, Anna. We'll just start with you. I was wondering if you could both tell us just a little bit about yourself. What did you do before you came into teaching? Where did you come from? Maybe just a little something to introduce you to the ITP crowd.

Anna: Sure, I can start. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. I moved away for grad school when I was 24. I actually met Cameron in grad school, but at the time I was not in education at all. I was getting a master’s in International Development, had been working in nonprofits for a while. We started dating, he went his own way, I went my own way, and then we became more serious. We got engaged. He moved to the Dominican Republic to be a teacher, and then we moved to China. And that’s where I transitioned into teaching.

I started the slow burn. I started subbing, then got into a program, then student teaching, then intern, and now finally, after a couple of years, I’m a more established teacher.

Kent: And now they’re the power teaching couple. Cam, tell us a few words about yourself.

Cam: Me? So I came from a teacher family. My dad was a superintendent, and I grew up in a really small town in the eastern part of Washington State with about 1,500 people, with one public school.

Greg: What school district was that, Cam?

Cam: It’s called Ritzville School District.

Greg: I can’t from now on Mercer Island.

Cam: OK, so we’re about an hour west of Spokane, right on I-90.

Greg: All right, all right. So how does a kid from Ritzville—1,500 people, Washington State—end up… I could see why you might become a teacher. How do you end up going to the DR, Dominican Republic?

Cam: Yeah, well, I went elsewhere first. I wasn’t going to be a teacher. A lot of teachers’ kids are like, “I don’t want to be a teacher. My parents are teachers,” and then we all become teachers anyway.

I ended up at UW in Seattle. I had a friend at the time—his parents and my parents were good friends—and he’s about 12 or 13 years older, maybe 14. He said, “Why don’t you come visit me in Hong Kong?” So I was 20. It was my first trip abroad. He and his wife at the time were at their seventh or eighth year at Hong Kong International School.

I was like, “Wow, this is pretty awesome. You guys have a pretty cool life here.” That was pretty much it.

So from there I got my undergrad degree in European Studies, and I moved to Russia to do a Fulbright teaching English. That was after I met Anna. While I was there, I finished my master’s, and then I moved to the Dominican Republic to get my first real teaching job, teaching fourth grade at a small international school of sorts.

That was pretty much all she wrote. Once you live in a small town and you see what else is out there, you either get terrified and go back to that small town or you can’t get enough. For me, I just couldn’t get enough. So I left the US when I was 24 and never looked back.

Greg: So let me see if I have this right. You met Anna in the States, is that right?

Cam: Yeah, we met when we were both in grad school, but for different reasons.

Greg: OK, so let me see if I get this straight. Anna, you grew up in the Dominican Republic. You went to high school there, then college. Did you go from the DR to Seattle, the Pacific Northwest?

Anna: Yeah. I did all my education up to that point in the Dominican. I got my undergrad there, and then I went to grad school in Seattle. It was a big adjustment.

I had been to the US before, but I had only been east. The west, with all those trees, was very new for me. The west with that little sun was very new to me. And of course, the international teacher’s office at UW—when they see international students that come from sunny places, they’re like, “OK, here’s light therapy lamps. Please go there and don’t get depressed.” It’s very much like that.

Kent: There’s a reason why Twilight was filmed in the upper northwest corner.

Anna: Oh yeah. It is. We went to Forks on a spring break actually and went to all those locations, just a little after the craze had died down a bit. Twilight fangirl.

Greg: Nice. So is your current location the first time you guys traveled overseas together?

Cam: No. So we moved abroad—technically the Dominican Republic is abroad for Cameron.

Anna: Yeah, there with me.

Cam: Together, I’d say after the DR. I was living in Russia doing my English teaching, went to the Dominican—so for me that’s abroad, not for her—and then we went to Shanghai for three years. From there it was Korea for two, and then a short stopover in Hawaii for three, where we lived through most of the pandemic while we finished her US citizenship. And now we’re going into year four here in the desert. Next year will be year four.

Greg: So Anna, were you a trailing spouse when you guys went to Shanghai then?

Anna: Yes, I was.

Greg: And how is that? Cam, did you teach elementary when you went to Shanghai?

Cam: Yeah, it was elementary for me.

Greg: And Anna, you went as a trailing spouse. Did you end up working at that school or doing anything while Cam was teaching?

Anna: At first I was working remotely, but it was not a paid position. Eventually I was like, “OK, I love this job, but this is not sustainable because it doesn’t pay me any money and Shanghai is expensive. So I want a job that pays me.”

Eventually the school invited me to sub. It’s hard to find subs at an international school, so I started. I remember my first assignment was in fifth grade. I was like, “OK, I’ll do it. A little older. I don’t know, but OK, I’ll give it a try.”

Eventually it was more middle and high school. Then when we were in our second year in Shanghai, I was like, “OK, I think I can hack this.” I left my remote job and started looking at programs that would give me a teaching certification that I could do online.

I enrolled in a program at Montana State, completed that, and then I did my student teaching at a completely different school across town in Shanghai.

Greg: The reason I asked you that is because we do have a few listeners—even recently—we’ve gotten a few requests for us to talk more about trailing spouses. And I know that you’ve already experienced that.

It’s good to hear you mention that because not every school, but a lot of schools overseas want their new hires to bring their families. They want you to have the family package. It’s better for the school because they’ll keep you. They’re more invested with you, right? Cam’s going to stay there if you’re also with him and you’re trying to work it out.

So they offer you maybe to sub, and that’s awesome because not only did you sub for them, but you also started your teacher journey and you ended up being an international teacher too. I think it’s great to hear from you.

Anna: It’s funny that you mention it because when Cameron was interviewing at his first job fair, it was one of the first pieces of advice that we got. We were advised by a head of school, “OK, Anna, you’re not teaching, so they’re not interviewing you technically. But if you can sit in on the interview so that you can understand what you guys are getting into as a unit, sit in on as many interviews as you can.”

That was really eye-opening, and it helped me understand what it would really mean in the end. A lot of the admin that interviewed us asked me what I thought about things and how I saw myself in those cities. I think it was a really valuable part of the process.

At first, when I spent eight hours at home without talking to anybody, that was tough. It was tricky. There were those waves of “I don’t have any friends,” and “What am I doing here?” and “What happens if I don’t meet anybody?” But eventually that got a lot better as soon as I started plugging myself into the school community. I was at school all the time, so people were like, “Yeah, of course you work here.”

We would go out for teacher appreciation days at restaurants and they’d be like, “Oh yeah, you’re a teacher. You count. It’s OK.”

Greg: Hey, welcome to another episode of the ITP.

Kent: I'm Kent the cat guy. I'm bringing this in. I want to say good morning to JP Mint. Hey, JP.

JP: Hello. Good morning from Mexico.

Kent: I would like to now bring in Greg, the single guy. Good evening, Greg. How you doing?

Greg: How you doing, Kent? Good to be here.

Kent: So good to be here. And I'd like to now bring in our special guests coming in all the way from the desert a couple miles away. Welcome, Anna and Cam. Come on in, Anna and Cam.

Anna: Thank you. It's good to be here. It's good to chat with you guys.

Greg: Thanks for being here, Anna. We'll just start with you. I was wondering if you could both tell us just a little bit about yourself. What did you do before you came into teaching? Where did you come from? Maybe just a little something to introduce you to the ITP crowd.

Anna: Sure, I can start. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. I moved away for grad school when I was 24. I actually met Cameron in grad school, but at the time I was not in education at all. I was getting a master’s in International Development and had been working in nonprofits for a while.

We started dating. He went his own way, I went my own way, and then we became more serious. We got engaged. He moved to the Dominican Republic to be a teacher, and then we moved to China. And that’s where I transitioned into teaching.

I started the slow burn. I started subbing, then got into a program, then student teaching, then intern, and now finally, after a couple of years, I’m a more established teacher.

Kent: And now they’re the power teaching couple. Cam, tell us a few words about yourself.

Cam: Me? So I came from a teacher family. My dad was a superintendent, and I grew up in a really small town in the eastern part of Washington State with about 1,500 people, with one public school.

Greg: What school district was that, Cam?

Cam: It’s called Ritzville School District.

Greg: I can’t from now on Mercer Island.

Cam: OK, so we’re about an hour west of Spokane, right on I-90.

Greg: All right, all right. So how does a kid from Ritzville—1,500 people, Washington State—end up… I could see why you might become a teacher. How do you end up going to the Dominican Republic?

Cam: Yeah, well, I went elsewhere first. I wasn’t going to be a teacher. A lot of teachers’ kids are like, “I don’t want to be a teacher. My parents are teachers,” and then we all become teachers anyway.

I ended up at UW in Seattle. I had a friend at the time—his parents and my parents were good friends—and he’s about 12 or 13 years older, maybe 14. He said, “Why don’t you come visit me in Hong Kong?”

So I was 20. It was my first trip abroad. He and his wife at the time were at their seventh or eighth year at Hong Kong International School. I was like, “Wow, this is pretty awesome. You guys have a pretty cool life here.” That was pretty much it.

So from there I got my undergrad degree in European Studies, and I moved to Russia to do a Fulbright teaching English. That was after I met Anna. While I was there, I finished my master’s, and then I moved to the Dominican Republic to get my first real teaching job, teaching fourth grade at a small international school of sorts.

That was pretty much all she wrote. Once you live in a small town and you see what else is out there, you either get terrified and go back to that small town or you can’t get enough. For me, I just couldn’t get enough. So I left the US when I was 24 and never looked back.

Greg: So let me see if I have this right. You met Anna in the States, is that right?

Cam: Yeah, we met when we were both in grad school, but for different reasons.

Greg: OK, so let me see if I get this straight. Anna, you grew up in the Dominican Republic. You went to high school there, then college. Did you go from the Dominican Republic to Seattle, the Pacific Northwest?

Anna: Yeah. I did all my education up to that point in the Dominican. I got my undergrad there, and then I went to grad school in Seattle. It was a big adjustment.

I had been to the US before, but I had only been east. The west, with all those trees, was very new for me. The west with that little sun was very new to me. And of course, the international teacher’s office at UW—when they see international students that come from sunny places, they’re like, “OK, here are light therapy lamps. Please go there and don’t get depressed.” It’s very much like that.

Kent: There’s a reason why Twilight was filmed in the upper northwest corner.

Anna: Oh yeah, there is. We went to Forks on a spring break actually and went to all those locations, just a little after the craze had died down a bit. Twilight fangirl.

Greg: Nice. So is your current location the first time you guys traveled overseas together?

Cam: No. So we moved abroad—technically the Dominican Republic is abroad for Cameron.

Anna: Yeah, there with me.

Cam: Together, I’d say after the Dominican Republic. I was living in Russia doing my English teaching, went to the Dominican—so for me that’s abroad, not for her—and then we went to Shanghai for three years. From there it was Korea for two, and then a short stopover in Hawaii for three, where we lived through most of the pandemic while we finished her US citizenship. And now we’re going into year four here in the desert. Next year will be year four.

Greg: So Anna, were you a trailing spouse when you guys went to Shanghai then?

Anna: Yes, I was.

Greg: And how is that? Cam, did you teach elementary when you went to Shanghai?

Cam: Yeah, it was elementary for me.

Greg: And Anna, you went as a trailing spouse. Did you end up working at that school or doing anything while Cam was teaching?

Anna: At first I was working remotely, but it was not a paid position. Eventually I was like, “OK, I love this job, but this is not sustainable because it doesn’t pay me any money and Shanghai is expensive. So I want a job that pays me.”

Eventually the school invited me to sub. It’s hard to find subs at an international school, so I started. I remember my first assignment was in fifth grade. I was like, “OK, I’ll do it. A little older. I don’t know, but OK, I’ll give it a try.”

Eventually it was more middle and high school. Then when we were in our second year in Shanghai, I was like, “OK, I think I can hack this.” I left my remote job and started looking at programs that would give me a teaching certification that I could do online.

I enrolled in a program at Montana State, completed that, and then I did my student teaching at a completely different school across town in Shanghai.

Greg: The reason I asked you that is because we do have a few listeners—even recently—we’ve gotten a few requests for us to talk more about trailing spouses. And I know that you’ve already experienced that.

It’s good to hear you mention that because not every school, but a lot of schools overseas want their new hires to bring their families. They want you to have the family package. It’s better for the school because they’ll keep you. They’re more invested with you, right? Cam’s going to stay there if you’re also with him and you’re trying to work it out.

So they offer you maybe to sub, and that’s awesome because not only did you sub for them, but you also started your teacher journey and you ended up being an international teacher too.

Anna: It’s funny that you mention it because when Cameron was interviewing at his first job fair, it was one of the first pieces of advice that we got. We were advised by a head of school, “OK, Anna, you’re not teaching, so they’re not interviewing you technically. But if you can sit in on the interview so that you can understand what you guys are getting into as a unit, sit in on as many interviews as you can.”

That was really eye-opening, and it helped me understand what it would really mean in the end. A lot of the admin that interviewed us asked me what I thought about things and how I saw myself in those cities. I think it was a really valuable part of the process.

At first, when I spent eight hours at home without talking to anybody, that was tough. It was tricky. There were those waves of “I don’t have any friends,” “What am I doing here?” and “What happens if I don’t meet anybody?” But eventually that got a lot better as soon as I started plugging myself into the school community. I was at school all the time, so people were like, “Yeah, of course you work here.”

We would go out for teacher appreciation days at restaurants and they’d be like, “Oh yeah, you’re a teacher. You count. It’s OK.”

JP: I wanted to ask you a little bit more detail about the teaching credential you got and how that worked out, because I’ve never heard of this Montana program and I don’t know if it still exists.

Anna: Unfortunately, the program, to my knowledge, closed a couple of years ago. It was called the Northern Plains Transition to Teaching program at Montana State.

I’m going to be very honest with you—I only chose it because it was the most affordable thing I could find at the time, and because the Montana license had reciprocity with states we were most likely to return to in the US, like Washington and Oregon. So I was like, “OK, this makes some sense.”

The focus of the program was to give teaching licenses to people who were either going to Montana, South Dakota, or Wyoming, but they had worked with teachers abroad before. There were a few components on comparative international education and evaluating tests like PISA, and the way international schools approach education—comparing learning models across countries.

So that was pretty cool. It was a pretty well-rounded program.

JP: And was it fully remote because you were in China at the time?

Anna: It was, and that was very important to me—to find something that didn’t require me to go back to the US to do student teaching. A, because I didn’t want to go away from Cameron, and B, because I didn’t really want to do student teaching in the US.

So I did some research, and they mentioned the school where I ended up student teaching. I contacted them and said, “Hey, I’m going to start this program. I would like to do student teaching with you guys down the line. Is that possible?” They talked to their AP coordinator and the head of the department, who had had student teachers from that program before, and they said, “Yeah, just let us know when you’re ready to start and you’ll be fine.”

Greg: So you student taught at a different school from Cam?

Anna: Yeah, I did. It was a long commute, but worth it because it allowed me to do a nice split of regular classes and also Advanced Placement. At the time, I was aiming for more specialized high school social studies teaching, so I wanted to start strong with more demanding curriculum from the get-go.

Greg: You seem like you’re secondary. Here in the desert, what are your current teaching assignments?

Anna: Seventh grade, middle school.

Cam: I’m doing middle school as well—social studies for both of us, but I’m in sixth grade.

Cam: This is my first middle school job. When we came from Hawaii, I was teaching grade six elementary, so this is my transition into middle school. I’m hoping to continue that in the future. Whenever we move on, we would like to maybe have her work high school and me stay with middle school, but two middle school social studies teachers is a bit more complicated. I’m also prepared to go back to elementary if it’s the right fit.

Greg: The right fit—[www.amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com) or wherever you buy your finer books. Finding the Right Fit by Greg Lemoyne, MAMDPHDMASDASP. Some of those might not be true.

Kent: A lot of those aren’t true. Thanks for that plug, buddy.

Greg: Anna and Cam, tell us a little bit about how you’re enjoying your current assignment—the country, the coworkers, the school. Are you happy?

Kent: Can you see Kent and Greg without pants on from where you are right now?

Greg: Oh my God.

Kent: You know what? We pride ourselves on honesty here.

Cam: It’s pretty good. We’ve been in the tropics for most of our career, so it’s a little bit warmer here than what we’re used to. Life is pretty good. We like our school quite a bit. We have great admin, which to me is the hallmark of a great school. I would go pretty much anywhere as long as I know that I have good colleagues and good admin.

Since we spend so much of our time at our workplaces, you want to be happy there. No school is perfect. Each school has its challenges, and there’s no shortage of those here either.

Where we live, it can be a little dry at times, and maybe a trip across the bridge every month or two is helpful.

Anna: Since we’re used to heat with very high humidity, this is very manageable heat. I do sweat a lot easier in dry heat, so I don’t love that part, but dry heat is usually more manageable.

The dust can be tough because I have allergies. Other than that, I don’t really mind the weather.

There are moments where, unless you pay attention to seasonal differences, time doesn’t feel like it’s passing. Now we measure time by temperature shifts—furnace season versus cooler season.

Cam: One of the things we often say to people is don’t keep your blinders on. There are so many great places out there that you never would have thought of with great schools. It may not be your dream location, but it can still be a great fit.

When we moved to China, we initially said no. Then we saw a scene from Skyfall in Shanghai and thought, “That looks pretty cool.” We gave it a try and ended up loving it.

Greg: Did you meet James Bond?

Cam: Not quite, but we had a parent who looked a lot like Daniel Craig.

Greg: Let’s talk about job fairs.

Cam: We’ve been to three—Boston, Melbourne, and Bangkok—each under very different circumstances. One as a teaching plus trailing spouse situation, one as a newly qualified teacher pairing, and one where we were targeting very specific schools due to citizenship requirements.

Anna: The Cambridge fair was my first experience as a trailing spouse. I helped with logistics, sat in interviews, and got a real sense of what life would look like beyond the classroom.

Some schools were very honest about financial realities and social factors, which was incredibly helpful.

In Melbourne, I shifted strategy toward internships, which led us to Korea. That internship gave me foundational teaching experience.

Intern roles vary widely, but typically include EAL support, co-teaching, planning assistance, and general school support tasks.

In Bangkok, the process was much more competitive. We interviewed a lot but didn’t land offers from our top targets. I eventually received an offer from a school in Hawaii.

Cam: Schools prioritize teaching couples because of cost efficiency and stability. Two teachers without kids fill two positions while costing less overall in benefits, housing, and logistics.

Anna: And there’s reduced risk. A non-working spouse may struggle to adapt, which can impact retention. Two working teachers are generally more stable hires.

Greg: Let’s take a quick break to tell you how to get in touch with us. You can find us at [www.itpexpat.com](http://www.itpexpat.com), email us at [internationalteacherpodcast@gmail.com](mailto:internationalteacherpodcast@gmail.com), or join our Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/ITPExpat. You can also find us on Instagram at ITPExpat.

Thanks to our listeners from over 100 countries.

Greg: Let’s get back to the show. I’ve always wondered about the pressure of teaching couples. You both come home stressed at the same time.

Cam: That’s true, but it also means we can support each other and understand exactly what the other is going through.

In China, Anna had some tough moments adjusting—like the mushroom incident.

Anna: And the pajamas incident.

Cam: She got locked out of the apartment in her pajamas and had to get help from security.

Anna: I had to prove I lived there while standing in pajamas in front of multiple officials.

Cam: It was a classic culture shock moment—what we call “pecked to death by ducks.” Small frustrations build up over time.

JP: You’ve taken that experience and started giving back. Tell us about your project.

Cam: We run nomadicgregors.com. It started as a travel blog but now focuses on expat life and international teaching.

We cover recruitment agencies, job fairs, expectations, red flags, and how to get started. We also offer a structured course with ten modules guiding teachers through the process.

Anna: The goal is to help teachers realize they have options. Many leave the profession because of poor conditions, not because they want to stop teaching.

If we can help even one teacher stay in the profession by going abroad, it’s worth it.

Greg: Welcome to the ITP circle. We’re building a network of resources—podcasts, blogs, and communities—to support international educators.

Cam: We also talk about broader expat life topics—finances, travel, family relationships.

Greg: Let’s wrap with two questions. First: what are three things you need to feel comfortable in a new place?

Cam: Coffee, a good TV, and either a good pillow or proper kitchen tools.

Anna: And candles.

Greg: Second question—any police or customs stories?

Anna: In China, we were checked for passports at home. In Cuba, we were questioned extensively at immigration because of my nonprofit background.

We were questioned multiple times over about an hour, and then again outside the airport. It was intense.

Greg: Final thoughts?

Cam: Just go for it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Anna: Teaching abroad makes you a better, more adaptable, more open-minded person. It truly changes your life.

Kent: ITP crowd, we’ve done it again. Thanks to Anna and Cam. You can find them at nomadicgregors.com.

Thanks to JP Mint, Greg the single guy, and I’m Kent the cat guy.

We’ll see you next time.

All: Thank you.