Teaching English in Taiwan

Video transcription:

How long have you been in Taiwan? This is my seventh year seven I been gone a couple of times and I thought about leaving and I usually have never had enough money yeah the reason I'm not leaving...

What do you like about Taiwan?

Everything the England haven't got, great weather and a good lifestyle it's an easy lifestyle like you work five or six hours a day. Weekends and evenings are free you can have a lye in in the morning.

So in Taiwan the work hours you definitely have the potential in Taiwan to work a pretty easygoing schedule. It's gonna depend on the school like you could work and you know basically an 8 to 4 or 8 to 5 and a public elementary school if you are licensed teacher.

Or you can work in a buxiban and end up working 8 hours a day or in a kindergarten say. But I would say generally it's pretty easy to find easier going schedule a school that's gonna give you an ARC for working you know a minimum of 12 hours.

I got one for working twelve hours at one school and another for working eighteen hours, so yeah it's definitely possible to find schools out there with a pretty easygoing schedule. Some schools some buxibans may require you to work on Saturdays though I worked in one that did so it's really good to depend.

A lot of the guys like the girls here and the girls seem to like the Western guys which is always a plus for the male ego. Girls have issues with that of course because a lot of Asian guys might not be a Western girls fatigue. Which girls the Western girls or the Asian girls yeah the Western girls. They don't usually take sexually to the Asian male you know, some do some do I've known a lot to be kind of down about finding a boyfriend.

The good things...

Salaries teaching English in Taiwan

Money's good. How much how much money can you make in a month?

If you want to work you can make 100,000 NT a month if you want to working 100 mm NT it's just short of two thousand pounds so maybe about three and a half thousand US maybe that's a four thousand Canadian.

How many hours does that take to make that kind of money?

You may need to work about seven or eight hours a day. Yeah okay 8 hours a day to make that kind of money which it can be quite tiring...

You can make that kind of money if you're teaching eight hours a day and getting paid by the hour around say at least 600NT which is totally possible but that's a lot of work.

But that's if you want the money you know some people come from the lifestyle some people just do 16 hours a week to get an ARC and then that gives them enough money to live on and then they can use that time study Chinese, study themselves, whatever...

How much is it about an hour that teachers get paid?

About an hour the minimum is about 550 to 600 NT an hour... Trying to work out how in different currencies so in US that will be that's about $20 US minimum you know you can you can want to do private so you get some schools you can couple that between 20 and 40 US an hour depending on how much you value yourself I guess

Learn more about the salaries teaching English in Taiwan.

Advice on finding a job teaching in Taiwan...

What advice would you give to someone who's interested in coming abroad to teach?

Straight away contact the famous site in Asia called TEALIT.com.

Some people actually find MSM friends in the area - you can do that two months before you can kind of get some knowledge maybe a connection and actually have some friends here when you arrive.

Hey what's up this is Ian and I'm gonna tell you first Dale's gonna tell you about his experience with the with with food and Taiwan and then I'm gonna tell you mine which was a little bit different how do you like the food

How's the food in Taiwan?

This face answers the question, some people love the food many kinds of fish, lots of fishy things you know fishes friends.

But I am vegetarian and many of the vegetables here I don't really like. They have a huge range, they have like pickled vegetables of a semi Koreans now they have just weird-looking vegetables.

And I like things that don't look so weird I thought they have a lot of vegetarian restaurants here yeah they do yeah lots of sushi restaurants.

Buddhist restaurants where you can eat things which look like meat but you don't feel guilty.

So my experience in Taiwan with food was I thought I thought that it was pretty good and I was a vegetarian - actually I ate out in Taiwan for almost two years straight was only at the very end I moved into a new apartment that had a kitchen in it and I started cooking prior to that I lived in a studio apartment they had no kitchen and ate out for two years straight.

And for me it was no problem not much of a problem since there were different kinds of restaurants you can go to: Thai restaurants, Indian restaurants whatever and you can find stuff to eat.

But for me I ate out pretty cheap I didn't spend that much money I mostly ate in vegetarian restaurants because when I lived there I was a vegetarian and most of the vegetarian restaurants there are not gonna be like the vegetarian restaurants where you're from.

But they're catered towards Buddhists as in Taiwan there's a lot of Buddhist and the Buddhists they they don't eat this basically these are the median restaurants so they don't and they don't even eat onions garlic anything like that or dairy.

So it's pretty much there's lots of things that look like meat taste I don't know pretty good you know kind of cooked kind of Chinese style and yeah I thought I thought that was pretty good a lot of things that looked like me but they're made from soy or wheat gluten and it's a lot of like restaurants like buffets we can go in pay maybe three bucks and get a full meal.

Yeah it's definitely possible to eat anywhere from maybe like you know street food for maybe a buck and then like get meal in some restaurants for maybe two to three bucks four bucks and then of course you know depends you know this it goes up up up up up depending on the kind of restaurant but lots of options for vegetarians in Taiwan I'd say it's the best place for vegetarians.

More on the cost of living in Taiwan.

About drinks like fruit drinks or tea yeah I like the green tea here it's cheap. Millions of kinds of tea not just here in Asia I think Taiwan specialized in different kinds of things you know kind of milk teas with jelly inside balls of flour.

Another great thing about Taiwan is it's hot right it's hot so there's lots of great places get cool drinks and some of those drinks are fruit drinks.

Taiwan's great for fruit there's all kinds of there's all kinds of places to get fruit drinks like don't make it right in front of you all kinds of exotic fruit like dragon fruit and papaya mango all kind of tropical fruit that you can imagine they have is yeah it's good really good juice make it right in front of me a really fresh watermelon juice, carrot juice you name it they got it guava and all kinds of passion fruit really good stuff so that's fantastic.

And then tea if you like tea just tea shops are all over the place yeah basic stuffs like different kinds of green tea this black tea, oolong tea and what else they got if you're into that what is it the little fall they call it like 10 jus night what does that little jelly tapioca balls in it I can't think of what's the name...

Boba tea I think that originated in Taiwan.

Actually so that's a good option I think in Taiwan for food but like any place any foreign country you go to you're not gonna have the options like you do at home.

You know you're not it's different different you have fewer options but you know if you're kind of adaptable and whatever anyways I had a pretty good experiences yeah but I'm pretty I just tend to stick to the same kind of thing every time I'm a little boring with the food that drink yeah I feel like I know what I like.

What about a supermarket what can you get in the supermarket I mean do you find you can get foods from back home what kind of foods you can you can get food from back home?

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