Six months to teach?

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

coming over early January (yes I know we’ll be there in CNY and won’t find a job right away)…

I’ve found much cheaper tickets if we fly RT from Seattle to Taiwan on Jan 22, then out to Hong Kong or Okinawa on June 30 (about as long as we plan on staying for now) than flying back to Seattle…

questions then:
should I go for these tickets? I figure we could always ditch the end ticket if we stay longer than 6 months, decide to leave for somewhere else, or decide to come home…

is it more expensive to get tickets home (to seattle) when in Taiwan?

what’s happening these days with visa runs? where are people going? the other choice would be to get a sea-tpe-HK/okinawa ticket for only about two months and then use that leg to kh/okinawa as a visa run… but then we’d need to buy a RT ticket from HK/okinawa to Taiwan and maybe that’s more of a headache then it’d be worth… whaddya think?

and oh yeah… what do you think the job market in Taichung (Taizhong) is like right now? girlfriend and I are coming over, both want to teach, have a friend in Taichung (Taizhong) teaching right now so we’re planning on living in that city, bringing about $4k US between the both of us… any other advice?

thanks!

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I, too, am coming to Taiwan for 6 months (due to med. school starting in the fall…my return will be on june 30). I will be living with a family in Taipei. I will be coming next week.

I have a few questions for those seasoned teachers out there.

  1. deportation. I am coming on a visitor visa (60 days) which is extendable. I am not super concerned because I will be working at a cram school arranged through my boyfriend’s parents’ family. should i be worried?

  2. Mandarin classes: any suggestions in Taipei? (I want to teach part-time and work part-time…hopefully qualifying for a student visa so I won’t have to worry about going to HongKong)

  3. books: should i buy any ESL training books prior to leaving the country?

thanks,
Yuochen