I suppose this blog entry is a lot like going to see Titanic or The Mighty Ducks in theaters. You know the boat is going to sink, the Disney sports team never loses, and I will be going to Taiwan. So, despite the lack of a ginormous budget or a teen heart-throb actor, I will try to finish the story and make it entertaining as possible. So, let me pick up where I left off.
Jason and I were destined to teach English somewhere in the world. We just had to decide where to go. As it turned out, Jason's girlfriend, Amanda, had been studying China quite intensely for the last few years and wanted to study there upon graduation... and when I say quite intensely, I mean exactly that. Jason and his girlfriend are the two people in college who sit in the library for nine hours a day and shoot you a dirty look if you sneeze. they're very territorial about their library space. Jason used to hide books in the freight elevator, and even contemplated hiding in it one night so he could stay in the library after it closed. So Amanda and Jason wanted to move to China. I had only ever heard horror stories about pollution and hacking coughs and smog so think you can't see the sun. On top of that, I used to have pretty bad asthma, so China was out of the question for me.
So, logically, our research stemmed away from China. We explored Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and others with some help from our friend Google, when we stumbled upon a little island known as Taiwan: politically stable and progressive, economically powerful, the people speak Mandarin Chinese, less pollution than China. We stumbled upon gold. The decision was made. Taiwan here we come.
The plan was set. Jason and Amanda would go in August/September and I would meet them there a few months later upon completion of my four and a half years in the higher American educational system. Jason started to study Mandarin; I signed up to take a Mandarin class. We prepared, studied, and educated ourselves as much as possible for what we were going to be doing. We were ready to go.
Fast forward 6 months. It's September. Jason's visa was denied and he was never told why. Amanda moved to Wisconsin to work for some hippies. Jason is still in New Paltz. I will be going to Taiwan on my own, sans library rats. I would not let their failure hold me back. In fact, it made me want to go more, but I still had 6 months of school to finish before I could go. So i temporarily put my plans on hold to try and get some work done, but I never stopped talking about it. I told everyone I could what I was going to do. A few friends, here and there, thought about coming for at least a few days but ultimately would not commit to anything. Yet, a few seeds had been planted.
Fast forward again. It's December 19th and I have just graduated. I returned home in two feet of snow to a fridge filled with beer and drunken roommates. The perfect ending to college. I get a call from my friend Johnny who just walked down graduation road with me and he's coming over to hang out. In a drunken stupor at the end of the night we get to talking. He says, "Make me want to go to Taiwan." So I made my pitch. I delved through my mind and recounted tales about Ilha Formosa I had read, and even busted out little known facts about Taiwan that are inexplicably intriguing, and he was sold. That was that.
So here I am, one year later, recounting my tale three weeks before I leave and I'd like to mention how utterly simple this entire process has been. Everything seems to have just fallen into place... but I suppose that's because we haven't really settled anything. We're just going. We don't have jobs yet, or a place to live for that matter. We're just going. We took a class and have since received TEFL certificates, and we'll have our diplomas in hand, but that's about it. Straight up gangster.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
What To Do...
A little over a year ago I decided I wanted to move. It didn't matter how I would get there, what I would do there, or where I would be, as long as I wouldn't be here. Quite frankly, here has gotten rather boring. The people are great (sometimes), but the culture is lacking. To be honest, I grew up a pretty cultured child and have been traveling all my life, but something about suburbia has always been a bit blah. Bland, boring, humdrum, monotonous, lifeless: these are all good synonyms for suburbia.
I needed to make a decision about where to live. I considered Europe. I thought about Central or South America. I pondered Asia and Africa, too. I don't think the notion of moving to Antarctica ever quite crossed my mind, but in retrospect it was silly to rule it out. After all, penguins deserve companionship just as much as lions, elephants, panda bears and German people. I suppose at the time I realized I was a people person, hence the ruling out of Antarctica... and Germany.
So, I decided to pick a country completely based on chance and set out to find a globe. I would spin the globe, cover my eyes with my hands and stop the globe with my pointer finger. A few classroom break-ins at the Geography department later, I found a globe and gave it a whirl. Round and round went the topographical surface of a mostly blue sphere: the Andes merged with the Himalayas, the Pacific became the Indian and Antarctica still sat at the bottom, all alone, singled out from the fun. Continents shifted toward each other, Pangea re-emerged as the dominant earthly landmass and I closed my eyes.
Three times I spun the globe, and three times I landed on Sub-Saharan Africa. I had ruled out another place I did not want to live. The fourth time I tried to spin the globe the poles flipped and the Earth came crashing down onto the floor of a classroom I was not supposed to be in. So, before CSI came into the room to draw white chalk lines around the second Big Bang, I decided it would be a good time to leave. Disgruntled and unsatisfied, I went home and got drunk.
The next day, I found myself killing time in a computer lab after American Lit 2 . I thought that perhaps instead of deciding where to go, it would be a better idea to figure out what I would do once I got to where I was going before I got there. I debated which of my skills were most valuable on an international market. Lifeguarding had always proved to be a lucrative industry for most of my working years, however, the number of jobs available for international lifeguards are few and far between. You see, most countries believe in accountability for its peoples own actions, and let you swim at your own risk. Selling toys had been a forte in my earlier working years, but that would only lead me back toward the materialism I was so desperately trying to escape. I had always been fairly good at taking care of goldfish and I am a halfway decent basketball player but neither of these 'skills' would serve me well in my overseas endeavors (or at least they won't be very profitable). The idea of actually using my major, English, had fluttered past my eyes in only the briefest of moments. I had always been told, and assumed myself, that it was a rather useless major. So, at another brick wall, disgruntled and unsatisfied, I went home and got drunk.
However, this particular evening of debauchery led to a great discovery. My longtime friend and roommate, Jason, had been thinking the same thoughts as me. He wanted to leave just as much as I did. So, excited and inebriated, we began to explore the internet. A few Google searches later, we were destined to teach English abroad. How hard could it be? First and foremost, it's something I consider myself to be fairly good at. I speak English good and write good too. I've been doing it for practically all of my life. I think it came quite naturally around age 1 and just a few short years later I stumbled upon the skill of reading. So really, how hard could it be to teach it?
I needed to make a decision about where to live. I considered Europe. I thought about Central or South America. I pondered Asia and Africa, too. I don't think the notion of moving to Antarctica ever quite crossed my mind, but in retrospect it was silly to rule it out. After all, penguins deserve companionship just as much as lions, elephants, panda bears and German people. I suppose at the time I realized I was a people person, hence the ruling out of Antarctica... and Germany.
So, I decided to pick a country completely based on chance and set out to find a globe. I would spin the globe, cover my eyes with my hands and stop the globe with my pointer finger. A few classroom break-ins at the Geography department later, I found a globe and gave it a whirl. Round and round went the topographical surface of a mostly blue sphere: the Andes merged with the Himalayas, the Pacific became the Indian and Antarctica still sat at the bottom, all alone, singled out from the fun. Continents shifted toward each other, Pangea re-emerged as the dominant earthly landmass and I closed my eyes.
Three times I spun the globe, and three times I landed on Sub-Saharan Africa. I had ruled out another place I did not want to live. The fourth time I tried to spin the globe the poles flipped and the Earth came crashing down onto the floor of a classroom I was not supposed to be in. So, before CSI came into the room to draw white chalk lines around the second Big Bang, I decided it would be a good time to leave. Disgruntled and unsatisfied, I went home and got drunk.
The next day, I found myself killing time in a computer lab after American Lit 2 . I thought that perhaps instead of deciding where to go, it would be a better idea to figure out what I would do once I got to where I was going before I got there. I debated which of my skills were most valuable on an international market. Lifeguarding had always proved to be a lucrative industry for most of my working years, however, the number of jobs available for international lifeguards are few and far between. You see, most countries believe in accountability for its peoples own actions, and let you swim at your own risk. Selling toys had been a forte in my earlier working years, but that would only lead me back toward the materialism I was so desperately trying to escape. I had always been fairly good at taking care of goldfish and I am a halfway decent basketball player but neither of these 'skills' would serve me well in my overseas endeavors (or at least they won't be very profitable). The idea of actually using my major, English, had fluttered past my eyes in only the briefest of moments. I had always been told, and assumed myself, that it was a rather useless major. So, at another brick wall, disgruntled and unsatisfied, I went home and got drunk.
However, this particular evening of debauchery led to a great discovery. My longtime friend and roommate, Jason, had been thinking the same thoughts as me. He wanted to leave just as much as I did. So, excited and inebriated, we began to explore the internet. A few Google searches later, we were destined to teach English abroad. How hard could it be? First and foremost, it's something I consider myself to be fairly good at. I speak English good and write good too. I've been doing it for practically all of my life. I think it came quite naturally around age 1 and just a few short years later I stumbled upon the skill of reading. So really, how hard could it be to teach it?
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