Taking the MAT overseas

I was checking my e-mail this morning while Christina was showering when all of a sudden she stuck her head out the door and said, “Liji, update the blog!” After being married to her for more than two years, I have learned to distinguish the difference between her suggestions and her demands, so I got right to work on the update.
Before we came to Korea, I was making arrangements to take the MAT, a grad school entrance exam, but because we decided to come to Korea in such a short amount of time, I never had a chance to take the test. That is causing me problems now because I want to start a grad program a month or two after we return home, but I can’t apply without a test score.
I looked online to see if it were possible for me to take the test overseas. I found out that the nearest testing centers to Gunsan, South Korea are in Shanghi, China, or Tokyo, Japan. While I would love to visit either of those cities, our work schedule does not allow us time to do so. I e-mailed the testing company, Pearson, to see if there were any other arrangements that I could make. It turns out there are. All I have to do is find someone who has a Master’s degree in education, has experience proctoring standardized tests, speaks English fluently, and is willing to take time out of their schedule to proctor the exam for me. Let’s see, I live in a smallish South Korean city, there is no “American” school anywhere nearby, and I work from 2pm to 9pm, so if I want to find someone with those qualifications, I have to do it on a Saturday or Sunday.
Well, it turned out that finding someone was a lot easier than I expected. A friend that we made on the Airbase has all of the needed qualifications, and to top it off, through his job (he’s a psychologist) he administers tests from Pearson on a regular basis. I have had to write a letter stating my circumstances, and Steve (my proctor) has had to write a letter saying that he will be my proctor, and send a resume of his experience, and I still have to pay the fee, but it looks like everything will work out.
Hopefully, I will be able to take the test the last week of November or the first week of December. Then I have to apply to grad school. Since we have been here, I have been thinking more and more that teaching English as a second language is more fun than teaching high school Social Studies. So I have been looking into master’s programs along those lines. I found a program at Utah State University that seems to be what I want. It is called a Master’s in Second Language Teaching (MSLT) so it will better qualify me to teach Spanish as a second language, or English as a second language. In that program, there is a possibility that I could be selected to be a Grad Instructor to teach international students who come to USU English.
We think that it would be a good program for us because I can finish it in less than a year and a half. Christina is excited about the prospect of being closer to her family and Logan is a small enough “city” that I will be able to feel that I’m not completely cut off from the outdoors. Of course all of this is just speculation, I have not even take the MAT yet, and after I do, I still have to be accepted to the program. But it is something that we are interested in.