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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-27-2006, 03:00 PM   #21
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maximillion
vagabond, you ain't dead yet, finish that degree.
i'm just your ordinary, lazy, ignorant, slut.
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-27-2006, 03:06 PM   #22
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

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Originally Posted by Maximillion
Food and Beer for 4 people, night out on the town, total, $30, in China, in right places(not Swissotel).
I would have thought $30 would do at least 7 to 10 people unless they're requesting western food and beer.
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-27-2006, 03:30 PM   #23
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

vagabond, if I had said $20 , someone would accuse me of fabrication.

I sometimes smile when younger people complain of their lot in life, they have the world open to them, and this time they can go without a uniform and a rifle.
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-27-2006, 04:27 PM   #24
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

Howard, sorry to hear your son and female companion parted ways.
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-27-2006, 05:27 PM   #25
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

HIi Zipper, they are still good friends, but she got an offer to go to India to work for a Bank.

I see London got rated as one of 10 best cities to live in by CARP.
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-28-2006, 01:15 AM   #26
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

The pay scale in Japan is something like this. All take home pay. The rest of Asia ex HK and Singapore should be lower than this.
Conversation factory school $30000 per year 40 classes a week
Freelance Business English or conversation school $30-50 per hour as many classes as you can fit into your schedule
Some sort of upper level gig $60-100 per hour

With a masters or doctorate you can get into a university. The school year is 28 weeks.
University part timer $100 per hour.
University contract full-timer $40,000-50,000 per year. Teaching 15-25 hours per week. There are maybe 100 contract positions per year. You can stay about 5 years.
The top of the food chain is a university tenured position. $45000-100,000 per year. Teaching 4.5 - 15 hours per week (teaching is not related to money). Less than 10 tenured positions open up for foreigners per year.*

Like Bpp said the burn out rate is high. This is especially true at the lower end. Being the foreign monkey can be depressing but it does have some advantages. You can get away with stuff that would get the natives fired or put in jail.

I started out in a conversation school. It was a blur of work, girls, beer and other substances. I didn't make it through the third year.
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Re: Ping FlowGirl
Old 04-28-2006, 02:49 AM   #27
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Re: Ping FlowGirl

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nords
FlowGirl, don't you see a lot of people out your way bartering or getting paid for conversational English?

Many American military families who've been stationed in Japan get a chance to socialize or even pick up extra cash by joining conversational groups.* Their English gives everyone a chance to practice idiom (and accents) while they learn Japanese or earn some minor $$.* Nothing formal-- just sit around chatting for an hour or two.
Definitely. I've thought about doing something like this myself, although more to learn Japanese than anything else. Also the two times I studied in Beijing (for 3 months each) it was hard not to walk down the street without getting asked to teach English somewhere. Friends there who went that route made around $25-$30 an hour with no experience or degree needed - just a passport from one of the major English speaking countries.

If anyone is interested in teaching English abroad I suggest just travelling to your country of choice on a tourist or student visa and see what happens.
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.
Old 04-28-2006, 07:33 PM   #28
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Re: Teaching English Overseas.

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Originally Posted by Maximillion
Eagle, nice link, sure looks lke they make things easy.

Did your daughter return to the States, settle down etc, or is she still travelling?

Our son's actions still confuse us, he did phenomenal in his undergrad, was supposed to go to law school or pursue Grad studies, tutored a Chinese Engineering student while at School, next thing we know, at 22, he is off to China.

Came back after 1 year, but had met a Chinese Girl over there, was in lust, so returned.

Now, they parted after 5 years, but he still shows no signs of settling down.
She left Spain this year, and has returned to Hawaii. Works for an environmental outfit. She's got a small apartment, with room for DW and me. So, I guess I'll just have to return to Hawaii. Somebody's go to do it.
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Old 07-06-2010, 01:29 PM   #29
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I found this old thread. I'm seriously thinking about giving this a try in Panama. I love it there, and what better way to go than to get paid for being there? I have 2.5 yrs left till I'm fully retired, and this has really gotten my attention. It's my oldest daughter's fault....she's strongly leaning towards going to S. Korea to do the same thing. She just graduated and has always been the adventurer. I'm a little nervous about her going there alone, but I never could seem to stop her from doing what she really wanted. LOL...when we went to amusement parks, she always jumped on the rides that I wanted no part of!

As far as me going to Panama....well...my wife's gotta work a couple more years after I retire, and if I give it a try for say...6 months and really like it, then once she's done working, we could go back together. I'm not looking to live there permanently, but I could see maybe doing a few months at a time down there. The fishing's outta site!

So....anybody got any updated info on Teaching English as a Foreign Language? How about particularly in Panama?

The pay scale for Panama isn't very high...probably will cover living expenses and not much more. Money's not my motivating factor though.
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Old 07-06-2010, 05:09 PM   #30
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There is a decent thread on this topic from the perspective of an early Retiree here:

Raddr's Early Retirement and Financial Strategy Board :: View topic - Teaching English overseas as a FIRE-ee

When I retired at age 41 I planned to eventually teach English (I started the thread above about a year before I retired). However, that did not come to pass. I thoroughly researched the possibility and traveled to many countries since then. In fact, I found that I know more about the profession than many ESL teachers that I have met.

* I found I could integrate myself into local life and culture without teaching English or having any kind of job. In fact, having a job would interfere with this. Not having a job leaves you more time for important things like learning the local language.

* I don't need the money

* The pay in most places is terrible. This is especially true in most of Latin America. Often, pay is inverse to desirability of the place to live. Most Korean English teachers end up absolutely hating Korea, that is one reason why the pay is better there. Same goes for Vietnam. The same principle operates at the city level, also. Many expats want to live here in Medellin, Colombia where I am located and teach English. But the job opportunities in Colombia are much better in places less desirable to live where you have less competition.

* Getting a proper work visa is normally a *huge* hassle.

* To get any kind of decent job, you will need a CELTA certificate or equivalent. This is an intensive one month course that typically costs about $2000 (you will be doing almost nothing else for that month). There is also some preparation you must do before the class begins.

I don't mean to be too negative. These are just the conclusions of one person. But I was gung ho before I did my research, interviewed various English teachers (both abroad and some who had returned to the USA), and actually traveled and experienced life in several countries. This almost sounds foolish, but I think if you are already a teacher in the USA you would enjoy teaching abroad more as opposed to someone making a career change who may not know their aptitude and interest in teaching (I was in the latter category).
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Old 07-06-2010, 06:12 PM   #31
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Quote:
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* I found I could integrate myself into local life and culture without teaching English or having any kind of job. In fact, having a job would interfere with this.
Kramer, you have mentioned this before. I would really enjoy reading more about your experience in this regard. When I was abroad I was working, so I had automatic contacts. I thought that getting going socailly would be hard without this; but your experience has been quite different. Could you tell us a bit about how things went for you, and what your strategies were?

I understand that language facility has to be beyond fluent. That will be hard, but I think doable. It's meeting non-expats in a context that might lead to friendships that I feel clueless about. Meeting people is not fall-off-the-log easy here in the US!

ha
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Old 07-06-2010, 11:30 PM   #32
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Haha, It is hard to say exactly how one builds up a friends network in a particular living location. When I am a long-stayer, I always make it clear that I am staying in a place for a long time, not just a two week tourist. It makes a big difference.

Here are some quick ways I have found expat and local friends and I have tried to add specific examples:

* I have made expat friends at hotels that I stayed at or even meeting at restaurants that sort of thing. I am having lunch tomorrow with an American who saw what looked like a fellow American at the supermarket and introduced himself to me (since there are not many foreigners here). We have gotten together a few times since then. I met another guy through him who then gave me the phone number of a local expat looking for a tennis partner.

* I have made many local friends through expat friends. Expats that have lived in a place for years have built up their own network of friends. This is probably the fastest and best way to meet people.

* I have met many people through couchsurfing.com. I have used this mostly when passing through as opposed to living in a place. I did this in Medellin 2 years ago on my first visit here, and my current girlfriend is the cousin of the girlfriend of the American guy I contacted through couchsurfing.

* I have met a lot of people through girlfriends (I have had two girlfriends abroad since I retired and one other relationship that never really got to the girlfriend stage). I do often honestly wonder if it will be much harder for me to meet people when I get much older. Also, I wonder if my whole travel experience would change for the worse if I were married.

I am going to hesitantly and somewhat immodestly add a comment here to bring some context. A number of my friends sometimes call me "Kavorka" from the aptly named Seinfeld character Kramer, because I seem to attract women for whatever reason: Cosmo Kramer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In "The Conversion" after Kramer attracts the attention of a young Latvian Orthodox novice, Roberta, he learns from the priests that he has the Kavorka (lure of the animal)

I am just trying to say that my experience would probably not have been so positive if I were an old, bald, fat guy. I only reluctantly add this, don't mean to be boasting or anything.

* I keep in touch with friends worldwide, both locals and expats. I have time and motivation to do this since FIREing. On a weekly basis I will typically exchange a fair number of emails with friends and online chat with some friends in the Philippines (they seem to prefer chatting). A good friend there wanted to chat last week when her dad was in bad health this week and I made myself available. Her dad died two days later. Another friend is looking for a job and I have given her a lot of encouragement and pointers. I have never sent money to anyone, and no one has ever asked (oh wait, one girl I met in Thailand did ask for money via email in 2008, just say no!).

* I play tennis, I run, and keep in shape. I meet friends doing this and I also do it with other friends. In Thailand we would regularly get together for tennis. I did joint running workouts for over a month with a personal trainer on vacation. And this year I had a regular running date with a couple of different friends every other day.

* Some local friends want to learn or practice English with me, and that is fine with me. I do pay sometimes when I go out with some poorer local friends. I met a nice girl in Manila, strictly plutonic relationship, and she lives in a small house with 9 other family members. We have met on each of my trips there. Usually, we go to several places together and I pay 100%. If I didn't pay, we really could not spend time together. When they had the typhoon there last year, their house lost the roof. Then she had to stay at a friend's house for several weeks because there was not enough dry space on the floor at her family house, they gave the people with job sleeping space priority (she was attending university). She always wants to introduce me to her beautiful girlfriends.

* I have made friends with a lot of fellow ERs and expats over the internet, mainly people that I "knew" through internet forums, and then later met up with them. In fact, I highly recommend this.

* Today I had to go to Colombian immigration for an extension of my visa. I met a missionary from Japan there, he has lived in Medellin for 4 years, and we plan to meet up again soon. He speaks fluent English. I asked for his number instead of just leaving without exchanging contact info, and then found out he lives just 2 blocks from my girlfriend and just 1.5 kilometers from me.

* I have just randomly met people. I spent a week on vacation with the family of an elderly lady I met on the street in the Philippines. I still contact them when I visit the country. Her son named his first son after me. I am not really very good at meeting people this way, and I am more cautious nowadays for safety reasons, but it happens sometimes.

* I have made a number of friends at language schools (as a student), both fellow students and teachers. And also through my Thai tutor in Chiang Mai I met some Thai locals.

So what I find is that when I have more time, I can make more time for friends. For me, at least, working would take away from this, just like it did in my working career.

Let me add one more thing. I am more careful about the friends that I make now. There are a lot of odd expats, much higher percentage than in the general population Be careful out there!
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Old 07-07-2010, 12:39 AM   #33
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LOL! Thanks a lot, Kramer. Congrats on having the animal magnetism, opens many a door.

I think my experience will likely be tougher now that I am definitely "older". The last time I was guapo, now, viejo. But we work with what we have, right? Perjaps there is an old guy kavorka?

And I totally agree with what you say about being careful with your "friends". Buried deep in these pages in an old story about one of my misadventures with the wrong people.

ha
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