Graduating from college next week, what to do now?

[DinoDoc]

Maybe Taiwan pays better.

[Bosh]

You can also teach English in the PRC, just like what mindseye do.

Am shying away from PRC because:
-haven't found quite as good web resources (blacklists of bad schools).
-doesn't pay quite as well, (about half of what I'd get in Korea, although prices are lower) and have lots of student loans.
-don't really want to deal with a police state.
-not many jobs available in Hong Kong and the rent's insane there.
-one job I was looking at told me about how everything was heated 100% with coal in the winter and that there were clouds of coal dust all winter (although the smog is insane in most of Taiwan and Korea so this probably isn't a terribly good reason).
-am getting run a little ragged with recruiters constanting calling me at night or early morning as is (bad reason I know).

But most importantly there's a far far higher concentration of jobs available in a small area in Taiwan and (especially) Korea so I can jump to a new job far easier if I get ****ed over by a school. I might want to teach in China eventually, but I think a better way of going about that is being in East Asia already and seeing the schools first hand before accepting anything. As far as I can tell South Korea/Taiwan/Japan are the best place for newbies who are apply from the States. Might give Malaysia, mainland China, Thailand or Vietnam a shot later if turn out to be a decent teacher.

[orange]

Congratulations Boshko! Good for you

Just do what you think you'd like to do best. Life is too short to sweat the details.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Boshko
-not many jobs available in Hong Kong and the rent's insane there.

Well it depends. There are certainly cheap areas (don't just look at the ex-pat stuff), and you might be able to share an apartment with, say, Tingkai, another 'Polytoner. Besides, it's a happenin' place.

Originally posted by Boshko
-don't really want to deal with a police state.

You might have some misconceptions. Ask mindseye, don't take my word for it.

[Bosh]

Well it depends.

Unfortunately the not many jobs bits doesn't really depend

You might have some misconceptions.

I probably do. But I don't think that the government in China is especially bad, just somewhat more likely to annoy me. And I might try working in mainland China later like I said, just really want to pay of my $20,000+ in student loans first which would be harder to do with Hong Kong rent or non-Hong Kong pay...

Oooooh, job offers from a suburb of Seoul and the city where they hosted the World Cup...

[Arrian]

Snoop Doggie-Dog, get yoself a Jobbie-Job!



Welcome to real life.

Good luck, whatever you decide.

-Arrian

[Bosh]

Thanks Arrian.
Just talked to the managers of both schools on the phone. Both seem like decent bosses from what I can tell. Although it is a little strange being called "Davi-du Bo" but that's something I have to get use to

[Q Classic]

boshko, if you go to korea, it is critically important that you tell me whether you are going to chungju or not.

see, the bad thing about romanization is that the hometown my family is from can be romanized two different ways, the more common one being ch'ongju, which is 700k people.
it's also the capital of the ch'ungch'ongbukdo province.
now, there's another city in the area that's often romanized ch'ungju, which doesn't have as many last i checked. it too is in the ch'ungch'ongbukdo province.
then you have other cities with similar romanizations, like chonju.

they're all distinctly different in korean, but...

[Dinner]

Take the foreign service exam because if you get in you will be on easy street for the rest of your life. You'll never be rich but you will be middle class and you'll get to travel alot. On the downside may people in the foreign service get devorced since their spouses don't want to keep moving.

Still, in the mean time Korea is beautiful and it doesn't have SARS unlike Taiwan.