Currently in Australia, I have an MOE scholarship to study Mandarin in Taipei this Sept-Nov (3 months). I will bring my son with me, he’s 8. I will apply for an extendable 60 day visitors visa for the purpose of study. Assuming we both get extendable visas from the TECO office in Australia, do you think he’ll get an extension on his visa as my dependant? Does anyone have experience of this kind of situation? Difficult or not?
I’m still waiting for some documents I need to have before we can apply for our visas, so just quietly worrying about this question of my son’s visa…
Did that ten years ago no problem. Basically if the kid is a dependent he gets what you get. Make sure all the documents and them some are on hand. There may also have been some consideration about the other parent - or was that just Australia? Can’t recall.
More pressing is what are you going to do for schooling for the tot?
HG
Thanks HG, for the info on visas, I hope it still works that way.
The tots schooling…have quietly worried about that too, but feel it’s at least within my control, unlike the visas. I posted about it in the parenting forum and had some good suggestions
childcare advice for 8 year old/3 months
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=62502
I have decided to go for the expensive 1-1 class for him at my uni while I am in my group class, at least for the first month, as that way we will be in the same place and I can monitor what kind of experience he is having. Mainly I want him to feel/be safe and happy. Aside from that, I will homeschool and am working with his teacher on a plan for that. I hope he’ll get a lot out of the trip, not all academic.
Based on your experience, do you have any suggestions? If you do, perhaps you could PM me or post on the parenting thread I started.
I extended his visa with no problems–the official even gave him a gift!
He did the expensive 1-1 classes for 3 months at my school. He was quite happy with that.
It wasn’t great for him socially–hardly any other kids to play with–no local children who got used to him, anyway. He was always a novelty to local kids so the interaction wasn’t comfortable for him. We met some nice people with children but folks were very busy so we couldn’t really hang out together much. Taipei kids don’t get much time to just hang out!
Still it was a good trip.
He’s doing well academically back home despite missing 3 months of formal all-day schooling.