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| Running into UNESCO volunteers |
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| In the middle of a typhoon |
You’ll Live a Bold Life – From the onset, travelling abroad to teach requires bold decisions and massive change in your life. Uprooting yourself from comfort and routine is likely the hardest decision anyone will need to make when deciding to travel. When you arrive at your destination, you will be challenged daily on whether to live boldly or to retreat into comfort. I know this first hand. It’s easy to go back and forth from school and hang out only with foreigners who share similar cultures with your own. To do the difficult thing though, whether learning a language, eating unfamiliar food, or building bridges with someone very different from you will require self-motivation and courage. Travel an uncomfortable path and like the saying goes – it will make all the difference.
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| Hiking with students |
I’ve been able to train steadily in the martial arts – something that has been a passion of mine since an early age. I volunteer consistently and help to coordinate efforts at a large soup kitchen nearby. All this and plenty of time for a nice nap each day!
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| Hiking with friends |
Stress-Free Living – Though some people may say differently, being a guest English teacher is about as stress free as you can get. If you’re young and disagreeing with this statement, go work for 5-10 years and see what the difference is. My “work” life consists of finding pop songs, movies, and games that will interest 450 carefree middle school girls. No emails. No facilitating meetings with a room full of adults who act like they’re in middle school. No planning, documentation, hand holding, needless chasing…you get the point.
Sometimes the most stressful decision I make is whether or not to try the mystery soup at lunch time.
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| My International church |
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| Team MAD MMA Fighters |
You’ll Enhance Your Resume – No matter how long you plan to live and teach abroad, one thing is for sure. Being an individual who has lived in another culture will only add value to your marketability to future employers. In an ever changing face of the global workforce, showing that you are capable of adapting to cultural differences will give you an edge in finding work. Everyone knows the fear and frustration that living in another culture could present. If you are one who braved it, you’ll always earn some respect.
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| At the race track with students |
Sounds great man, cool pics! I may be going there pretty soon. Did you present the gifts you took over to your principal or your co-teacher?
I actually didn't bring any. I give little gifts here and there instead once I get to know them.
Oh. I don't know why, but I thought you said something somewhere about giving a gift. I guess I shouldn't give it too much thought.
Over think it I mean, lol.
I think it's a great gesture for sure. I just opted to wait, plus no room in my suitcases!
Lol, I know. It's challenging finding the room for so much stuff.
I taught abroad for a bit and I agree with most of these points except enhancing your resume. When I came back to the US, my time abroad was more of a negative than positive, aside from people finding it briefly interesting (I didn't pursue teaching back home though). Outside of teaching, I think your IT experience would mean a lot more and perhaps what you're doing now is also seen more favorably. Ie, you had a more respected career, so you must have had a good reason to pursue TEFL, as opposed to, you weren't good enough to find "real" work back home or wanted to get laid, which is what I think HR departments/interviewers want to believe when they see my TEFL experience.
Nevertheless, I started watching your videos and reading your blog as I'm stuck in an increasingly depressing rut now that I've been back home for a few years and have been struggling to figure out what to do to get out of it. I have had an okay job, it's just going nowhere and I'm not interested in it at all. I've looked at possibly moving to other western countries, but so many of them have high unemployment, foreigners complain on forums how difficult it is to find work in them, even ones with lower unemployment, or are extremely expensive and far away (Aus/NZ).
I miss the free time, which I really did not value and wasted when I taught abroad before. I miss the adventure. Discovering new things. Meeting other foreigners from all over the world like you mentioned. I live in an international city now, but it's hard to meet them because we don't have a common connection (clearly being outsiders who also speak English well). I don't miss feeling at the low end of the totem poll in the dating scene, as you mentioned in another video, though the same is true back home as well, but perhaps not as greatly so long as you're not around that sort of crowd.
It just gets harder and harder for me to justify at this point in my life. I really do not want to have to go through what I did when I returned last time. If I can find a way to make the experience enhance my career progression and increase my chance of finding a good, better paying job, I'd do it again in a heart beat.
Anyway, thanks for this blog and the videos! They've been very helpful.