Teaching Abroad: A Great Way To Travel

It’s a fact that travel dreams begin to intensify when summer is around the corner. For me and most other inveterate travelers I know, every fiber is starting to vibrate with an anxious need to hatch a plan pack a bag, and head off to far-flung places. The passport sings to us, asking to be paroled out of the drawer it’s been kept in for months. The question is, where and how? Money is tight, and gas prices are pushing plane fares upward. There are still great deals to be found, of course, but this summer it’s especially important to find ways to supplement income during the travels.

Teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) can be a great way to meet people and get steady pay. Tutoring locals interested in gaining a better grasp of the most commonly used language in the world can lead to great friendships, not just a few more Euros or Yuan. Often the job comes with low pay but great opportunities to experience a culture, travel widely, and meet some fascinating people.

Your chances of obtaining a decent ESL summer teaching gig are good in Asia. China is hungry for teachers to instruct adults. Their exploding economy means many professionals are looking to acquire a stronger command of English in order to be more competitive in the global marketplace. Japan, Thailand, and Korea have a vibrant market also despite less powerful economies.

The garden spots of Europe, however, are a tougher gig to land. Thriving Prague is a hot ticket. Gorgeous, cheap, and fun, the historic city is inundated with American, British and Australian college students eager to spend the summer tutoring by day and living it up at night. Dozens of private schools cater to the ever-more-Western business set looking to bolster their English skills. More easy-to-land opportunities can be found in the less-glamorous Polish and Russian cities.

If you’re on the search for ESL opportunities abroad, or have done it and want to share your insights and advice, please leave a comment!

Journaling on the Road

Let’s face it, finding time and discipline to write well on the road can be really, really tough. Traveling takes a lot of mental stamina. At the end of a long day, once you’ve found a dinner and settled into the hostel, the last thing you have the mental juice for is thoughtful writing about the day’s events. At that point, your brain doesn’t want to process or reflect. It wants to rest. It’s checked out for the night.

But I try to force myself to journal every night on my travels. I’ve got bags full of bits and pieces from my travels sitting in my closet, but the most important physical souvenirs are the small, leather-bound journals that gather dust on a bookshelf. The journals—weathered and worn—contain the thoughts and impressions of places and experiences recorded in the moment. Some entries are shallow and quickly scribbled; some are well-thought out and insightful.

Most travelers will tell you the same thing; their journals are frayed little time capsules of emotions and experiences they wouldn’t part with for the world. Sometimes they’re written on a rickety milk run train in the countryside, sometimes they’re written while perched on a rock high in the Alps while cowbells jangle in the distance. Sometimes the entries are well-crafted insights inspired while sitting in a soaring cathedral during evensong; other times they’re scribbled late at night while the eyelids are forcing themselves closed and the synapses are shot.

It takes discipline to keep up a journal on the road, but it’s well worth it. We’ll return to the smudged pages at some point in the future and be reminded of a vivid memory, surprising impression, or fleeting thought. And we’ll be glad we had the discipline to stop and record it, even when the train ride was bumpy and the eye lids were heavy.

Pick up that pen, open the book and record a memory to cherish.