You too can teach in Taiwan!

So we've been here well over six months now. I thought I'd mention a few things for the general population that might be interested in coming here to teach and see some of the world (and, it occurred to me later, it's a pretty good job when there are none in America.)

First off, this place is good for flexibility. There're always schools looking for teachers, at least for kids. We've heard the adult departments are taking a hit from the economic slowdown-meltdown.

If you've read our other blog mariekeithinarmenia.blogspot.com you can see how we spent two years trying to join the Peace Corps to do the third-world thing and be socially helpful and the like, and were rejected. But just two weeks after finding out PC didn't want us, we were on a plane to Taiwan with jobs lined up. It's good for sudden changes and travel. Very good for that.

It's also good 'cause you don't need any training. A college degree and a passport from an English-speaking country is it. It's kinda the new Eastern Europe. Of course, we wanted to see Europe, or South America, but Europe can now demand (and get) people with TEFL certifications and experience teaching English as a second language and other abilities. South America doesn't pay.

Not that I had to get paid for this, and Marie certainly didn't care; Peace Corps only pays you about $6,000 in a readjustment fee, and that only if you complete the two-year stint. But most of the programs in South America pay you enough to live there, and that's about it. If you wanted to travel you might actually spend money.

There were several groups offering to place teachers in South America but they frequently had a "processing fee" or something that was frequently a thousand dollars or something. This was only a problem 'cause Marie and I'd spent several thousand bucks on testing and shots and such for the Peace Corps. And we're getting a little older, so we're looking to buy a house or something when we get back and we couldn't do that unless we actually made money over the next year or so. This sort of thing, like PC, would be fine and great for a person out of college, say, interested in seeing the world cheaply.

Other countries like Taiwan are Korea, Thailand, China (yup, China), and Japan. But Japan has it's own special niche. They don't require special training or degrees, but they work about a year in advance, it's called the JET program. Like Europe, so many people are interested, they've got a backlog of people interested in going there and getting paid to do it. And they pay very well.

So that's a little how we ended up here: it pays pretty well and they'd take us immediately with no special training or education. We could've gone to China, which supposedly has better pay 'cause fewer people want to go and spend a year or more there, but they'd just had the latest crackdown on Tibetans for the Olympics, and I wasn't sure I liked the idea of arriving somewhere that might actually say, "Welcome, give us your passports." So we didn't do that.

I think it's important to come here knowing what you want to do, 'cause it makes a difference. In the case of Marie and I, we came here with the intention of spending some time in another culture, learning another language, and so on. We didn't have the intention of roaming around Asia. We wanted to spend a long time in one culture, to try and get to know more than a tourist's view.

So it isn't so bad that we got our jobs through Reach to Teach, which's sort of a headhunter group for teachers. They find a job with a company like Kojen or Hess or some other large school here in Taiwan, and then that school will pay to pick you up from the airport and put you up in a dorm for a week. That puts you in a financial hole right from the start, but you sign a year contract anyway, and if you complete the year, then they waive the fees (like 10 or 20,000 New Taiwanese dollars, which's only about $300 to $600 or so). At the end of the contract, they also give you a bonus of another 6,000 NT, so it can be close to a grand, U.S., that you'd give up if you break the contract. I think there's also something about giving up two-weeks pay if you break the contract. Sorry, I can't find the contract at the moment.

Oh, these details aren't on the contract Reach to Teach faxes to you. The details about breaking the contract show up once you're in the country and at a school's offices. So they do something of a bait and switch, knowing, now that you're here, you're less likely to balk at these details.

So the point is, if you're determined to come here and spend some time, then getting a contract can be okay, especially if you have little experience traveling and you don't know some Chinese already. If you aren't sure what you want and you think you might not want to deal with the problems of a for-profit school, then you should look into pretending to be a tourist. Find a decent hotel, learn the subway, bring a map to point to in a cab. If you're living here, I don't know if you still have to sign a contract the first time, but they don't have nearly the financial leverage if they didn't help bring you here. This'll make it easier to split if you only want to be here for six months or if the politics of the office gets to you.

The school also vouches for you in getting an ARC (alien residence card or something like that) and technically, if you quit, your ARC is immediately revoked and you have a week to get outta the country. But having gotten into the country, many people lurk under the radar, tutoring or whatever. And if you can find another school (and they're all very willing to poach other schools' teachers) then they pick you up and you get your ARC through them. There might be problems tho', if you let your ARC lapse, then try and get a new one. I dunno.

But don't feel bad if you do this or if you switch schools. Kojen isn't supposed to use foriegn teachers with kindergarden-aged kids, but they do it all the time. Occasionally, foreign teachers are actually herded out the back door of the school. So Kojen and other schools are doing illegal things on a regular basis anyway; everybody knows it, it's just accepted.

I should mention the visa. Visa's for Taiwan are easy. In fact, it's almost Canada easy. You get on a plane here, they write one out at the aiport, BUT that visa can't be extended. It's a tourist visa, 30-days: come, see the sights, eat, leave. If you think you're going to be a teacher, you need a two-month visa, those can be extended indefinately. They cost like $160 or so, but, as my brother in the State Department pointed out, that's just the reciprocal cost of what the U.S. charges for a visa.

Anyway, a visa can take some time, but mostly it's the cost and writing a letter saying you want to see the Taroko national park, and the beaches at Kenting, and Taipei 101, and Danshui, and the sunrise at Alishan and you don't think 30 days is enough to do it all, or something like that. We stopped at the Taiwan outreach center in D.C. (they don't officially have an embassy to placate mainland China) and we had our visas the next day.

So far, working here reminds me of working as a contractor for Microsoft. They pay you well, and there are even perks, like these bonuses you get when most of a class continues to the next session. This happens every three months, new class sessions, but they take months to get around to paying the bonuses. But it creates a nice little extra trickle of cash after you've been here four or five months. Each bonus is 400 or 500 NT, but it's enough for a good dinner or drinking session for a person. You can even have an okay meal for two.

But even thinking like a contracted employee (and an editor at that), I didn't see the stipulation in the contract that we would provide a minimum of 18 hours a week. NOT that Kojen would provide 18 hours a week, but we would be available for 18 hours of teaching a week. I think I've grumped about that before, but it's pretty important. My boss hired me 'cause she needed a new teacher to replace an outgoing person, two months from when she hired me. So for two months I was teaching about five hours a week and the occasional subbing.

Teaching 15 to 18 hours a week is a pretty comfortable, if simple, existence for one person, but under ten is underpaid.

Housing is something else. In Reach to Teach's literature they mention the school will help with housing. Maybe they're referring to the dorm they give you for a week, and can stay in for fairly cheap after that (if you yell at them loudly enough, otherwise they'll try and kick you out for the next teacher) but can be kinda crummy so you don't wanna stay there forever, but we had the idea that they would have someone who was a sorta real estate person, to help with long-term housing.

There is no specific help for finding a place to live. None. Other teachers at your school will probably help, but they have their own lives and problems. The Kojen main office's idea of helping was telling us about tealit.com, which's a popular site for foriegn nationals and English speakers to sell stuff, look for jobs and apartments, etc. So you're really on your own for finding a place. I suggest deciding what kinda person you are, first.

I work with a guy recently outta college, who isn't phased by all-night traffic. He lives near a college campus for 7,000 NT (apiece) with two other roommates. Marie and I are into our second careers. We live in the Wan Hua (Whaa) district for 14,000. But we live by ourselves with more space in a well-furnished apartment, and it's not nearly so noisy here. We don't have the array of shops here, but they aren't really far away.

And on money, Kojen (locally pronounced Kuh-JEN) was one of the last hold outs that paid every two weeks. They just ended that this month. They do allow new teachers to get advances for the first three months, but it's better to show up with cash.

We heard from Reach to Teach that we should bring about $1,500 apiece. Marie and I thought, as a married couple, we wouldn't need it. And besides, we had assurances from our bank in the States (Wells Fargo) that our ATM cards would work here.

We brought more than a thousand in travelers checks and it took us five or six different banks before we found one that would exchange them. And one of the hundred-dollar bills I had, had a marker blot on it. I watched that bill go around the bank office and be inspected by at least three different people and I really wondered if they'd reject it. We also couldn't find a bank that would work with our ATM cards, until we found MegaBank, which, ironically, has the fewest offices in Taipei.

Cash, while not so secure, is safest. On the up side, it is incredibly safe here, personally. Marie has never felt insecure on the streets here. I'd say the only risk of bringing cash is you might mislay some of it.

Taiwan is very modern, in places, which results in an extremely cash-centered system. Our credit cards work at all big stores and restaurants, but they all cost 20 to 50 percent more than buying from a local vendor or mom 'n' pop shop. So cash is cheaper as well as more flexible. But buying in these big, chain stores is the only way to get some tastes of home. So far, the best deal is 25 NT for a donut that tastes like a donut from Mister Donut or Dunkin' Donuts. That is just way too much donut. If you buy one off the street it's like 12 NT, but it also doesn't taste quite right.

And about time off: they talk about taking time off and you can certainly get vacation time, but don't expect to have weekends to see the country. We knew coming in that we'd have to work Saturdays, but we thought, and were led to believe, that we'd have Tuesdays off, so if we could cover Monday, we'd have a three-day weekend to travel the country. Right now, we're both working six days a week. I know some people are working less, some more, but many people were expecting to have two days off a week, even if they weren't one-after-the-other, but didn't get it. So it's taking more effort and organization than I expected to even leave the city and see some of the rest of Taiwan.

The best advantage here is Costco. If you want chips, cheese, or cereal at a reasonable price, find the Costco here first thing. Cheese here is hard to find, and priced like it's exotic. Cereal isn't very popular. It's easy to find, but it comes in small packages and they can be very expensive. But don't waste money and get a membership in the States. The fee here is 1,200 NT, not even $40, and they're very helpful in signing up. Five minutes and you're hip deep in gallon jugs of soap and cases of Red Bull. Oh, Costco's the only place to get Red Bull, according to a coworker. And American-cut t-shirts.

This unexpected, but I think of this as part of the fun of traveling. The local t-shirts are cut so that if you move your arm away from your body your sleeve hikes up to show off your shoulder. If you want a shirt that lets you raise your arm above your head before you're showing armpit hair, you gotta find the right cut, and Costco is one of the places, relatively cheap, that you can find that cut. I had no idea.

This's just a short-list and descriptions of some of the benefits and unexpected problems we've had with this adventure. Right now, with a global economic recession and near catastrophe in progress, it's looking pretty good. Marie and I aren't saving a lot, but we're saving some, which makes me think that going to South America would've been even less financially beneficial than I first thought.

It's been a dull couple of weeks; we're just getting back into the regular teaching routine after having that week off for Lunar New Year. But we're talking about taking a couple days to see some of Taroko national park. So hopefully we'll have another adventure soon.

But in the meantime, a photo for the cultural humor:


















This woman's jacket does say, "High Nice," above that "Jacket Rarely," and at the bottom "Always Start From Now."

I could almost see the last line being some marketer's idea of a tagline, except none of the rest of it makes sense, unless you count just throwing out words you want to be associated with or like the sound of, and that still doesn't explain why you'd want your jacket to be a jacket rarely. But the Puma symbol, even with the little registered trademark symbol, I think perfectly explains the translation confusion, and the habit shops here have about just using images and logos regardless of trademark copyrights. Personally, I'm all for infringing, but it's pretty bizarre to see this.

This sorta thing is pretty common. My current theory is this's where a lot of typoed shirts go. I've seen some bizarre typos on what look like school track sweatshirts and such that I think Taiwan's just an outlet for mistakes. Kinda the Land of Misfit Clothing.

More soon, and if there are questions about visiting or teaching here, I'll try to answer them, either here (if I can make the answers funny) or in an e-mail.