I've been living outside of my own country for nearly 3 years now. When I first came over here to the great wild unknown I thought it would only last one because that was the length of my contract that was arranged before I moved. While Covid had more than a little to do with it, I ended up staying quite a lot longer.
I'm not going to stay around here much longer but I have learned an awful lot about the world and the people who live in it and I wasn't really planning on doing that. I was just going to work, drink beer on the weekends, and take a break between college and getting a career.
Here's a few of the things I've learned by taking a gap year that ended up lasting several.
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Teaching is tough
When I was growing up I had a certain level of admiration for teachers but also kind of resented them, especially as I got older. Since I have been on the other side now I can say that I think they have some of the most difficult jobs in the world. Not only do you have to deal with a classroom of kids who more than anything just want to run wild all the time but you also have to deal with administrative bullshit and having several bosses, some of which are not actually educators themselves and they have rather ridiculous demands such as in my case they wanted the kids to be fluent in English after a year of studying once per day. All of this they wanted the teacher to accomplish with very little salary or even supplies. Let's just say that my classrooms never even came close to accomplishing that and I don't think any other ones, at least on the level that i am employed, ever do either.
People from all countries are mostly good
We all have some sort of bias that was put into our heads about certain nationalities and from what I have seen, not much of that is actually deserved. Let's just think about what the perception of Russians are for example. Russians have always been portrayed as the bad guys in movies and if you want your villain to sound extra intimidating, give them a Russian accent.
I've met quite a few Russians over the years and they have all just been regular people. In fact, the ones that i met had to work a lot harder than I have because they have to be fluent in English as well because nobody is in a hurry to learn to speak Russian. You can insert almost any nationality and I have found that they are mostly all good people. Sure you get a bad apple here and there but for the most part I would say that 85% of all people are good people.
I don't really want a "real" career
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now that I have seen what the half-assed jobs in ESL are like, I have to say that I would almost rather take a pay cut and live a more relaxed lifestyle than join the corporate machine. When I talk to my friends who went on to their careers right away back in the USA almost none of them are at all enthusiastic about what they do. They also have a lot more pressure to always be making more money when that mostly just gets chewed up by increased cost of life. I think that if I could find a way to make around double what I get paid now that I would be content even though on paper it would appear as though I make substantially less than my American counterparts.
I'll ask you this: What is the point of a higher salary if your cost of living just ends up taking away all that money anyway?
Over here in Asia I feel as though it is much easier to live a frugal, yet happy lifestyle. When I think about life in America, almost everything is driven by wealth.
I plan to eventually live over here
I should probably travel a bit more before I make that decision final but one thing I know for sure is that by speaking to people both younger and a lot older than me that live the expat life, they seem to be happier than people who live back home. I will eventually go back home and start a career but hopefully with the idea being that this job will not be a permanent thing for me. I will always be thinking about how I just need to save up enough money in order to get back to here in Thailand or somewhere similar.
You can keep your "west is best" crap.... because I don't really think that is the case at all.