Showing my patriotism at the Beijing Olympics.
Nearly a decade ago, I was facing the harsh realities of graduating with a liberal arts degree in a crashing economy. Despite having several internships under my belt, attending countless networking conferences, and being on the honor roll, my job prospects were slim to none. With less than stellar options, I decided to give teaching English in China a try. With the 2008 Olympics taking place in Beijing, I figured I could at least check that out, do a bit of traveling, and check living off a foreign country off my list. The economy would eventually recover, and I’d come back home to, you know, join the “real world.” Boy was I wrong!
After my first year in China, I returned home to my very own summer of love. A special lady I had met right before moving across the world joined me as we traversed the country seeing our favorite band – the newly reunited Phish. A couple of young kids in love, we visited a dozen or so states to catch a handful of music festivals and around 20 Phish concerts. To get by, we sold stickers and Bloody Marys in the parking lot and volunteered in exchange for festival tickets. We were on top of the world. Then summer tour ended and reality once again came crashing in.
A couple of hippies in front of the old Grateful Dead house in San Francisco.
The Recession became Great, and jobs were still nowhere to be found. We ended up renting a room in our college friends’ house, working part-time, and eventually needing to apply for food stamps. As two college-educated, experienced, motivated young adults, this was disheartening to say the least. When our house and car got broken into over the holidays, enough was enough. China was hiring, and I was going to bring us to Beijing in search of a better life. My dad fled the Communist USSR for the United States, and I was fleeing it for Communist China. Funny how much things can change in a generation.
The view of the Forbidden City from atop Jingshan Hill.
Landing in Beijing basically broke, we stayed with a friend until we could afford to rent a room somewhere. We found part-time teaching jobs that we supplemented by doing private tutoring and voice recording. To make life easier, we both took Chinese classes in the evenings. We slurped noodles in hole-in-the-wall restaurants and drank cheap beers in the street. Rather than splurge on taxis, we crammed in with the masses to ride the subway several times a day. Everything was going well, until our roommate bailed without warning and left our stuff in a hotel across the street while we were in Inner Mongolia. After making so much progress, we were back to square one. We were homeless in China.
Thankfully, we had made some great friends in our short time in Beijing. They took us in and set up a bed in the living room for us until we found a place. After looking at over 30 apartments, we ended up finding the perfect place. Believe it or not, it was in the same complex, just a few doors over. The whole thing ended up being a blessing in disguise, as we finally had a place to call our own right next door to good friends.
Home sweet home!
With our accommodation woes finally solved, we got to work. I was hired to teach at a university, while my girlfriend secured a couple different jobs for the new school year. Thanks to my video background and my newfound Chinese skills, I also got picked up to contribute to the Chinese Language & Culture Blog. A massive project with them helped to pay off my credit card debt and book tickets for our first backpacking trip.
The amazing Temple of the Emerald Buddha.
Over Chinese New Year, we headed off to Thailand and Laos for a month. We partied on Khao San Road, got wild at the Full Moon Party, and went “in the tubing” in Vang Vieng. We also admired the glittering beauty of Bangkok’s Temple of the Emerald Buddha, spent three days trekking in the jungle outside of Chiang Mai, and took the slow boat down the Mighty Mekong. It was a life-changing experience to say the least. The travel bug bit, and it bit hard.
Back in Beijing, we finally became official with working visas and legit jobs. Life was good. We went out for Happy Hours and dinners on weeknights, parted like rockstars on the weekend, and took short trips during Chinese holidays. With our annual leave, we also managed to visit Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, and Bali. It was there on the Island of the Gods that I had a revelation. Why did we have to go back to Beijing? Why did we need to keep the same apartment and same jobs year in and year out? Wasn’t there a better way?
Can you blame me for not wanting to leave?
Determined to travel more, we took on extra jobs and lived off of just one salary. Everything else was sent home and kept in the bank to fund our next big adventure. After four years of living in Beijing, we hit the open road. We were finally taking a gap year, something we only learned about while backpacking in Southeast Asia. It’s a term familiar to Europeans and Aussies, but one that isn’t really in the American lexicon.
You can take the hippie off tour, but you can’t take the tour off the hippie.
We may have been a good decade older than the other gap year travelers on the Banana Pancake trail, but that was fine with us. With age comes wisdom, which aided us in our long, strange trip. Rather than look at the trip as a never-ending party, we used it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Sure, we still had several wild nights on the Thai islands and on the backpacker street of Saigon, but we also took Indonesian lessons, studied up on the traumatic history of Cambodia, and took time to talk to the friendly locals in Myanmar. We also launched our very own travel blog to reflect on our adventures and keep friends and families in the loop.
A second trip to Bali quickly reignited the passion that the island had originally sparked in us, and we knew we just had to stay there longer. Upon returning to China for a year of teaching in Kunming, I went ahead and applied for the Darmasiswa program to study Indonesian in Bali. As the head of the newly launched Indonesian Language & Culture Blog, I figured I was a shoe-in. When the e-mail finally came, I simply said to Rachel “So… Wanna move to Bali?” I don’t think I have to tell you her answer.
Marriage rocks!
Before moving to our favorite island in the world, we headed home to get married on Cloud 9. That’s seriously the name of the place where we had our wedding – Cloud 9 Farm in Asheville. The famous Indonesian island is a popular honeymoon destination, so we decided to go ahead and take a 9-month Bali honeymoon. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a rather memorable year.
After a few months in the slightly touristy beach town of Sanur, we rented a house in a village up the coast. For three months, we were the only bule (Indonesian for “foreigner”) around. We were invited to full moon ceremonies in the temple and to watch the sacrificing of a pig for the Galungan holiday. My teacher also invited me to a cremation ceremony in his village, which was actually quite the festive occasion. If only they sold meatball soup and ice cream at funerals back home. Balinese culture is fascinating and the people are incredibly friendly, and we’ll always look at the island as a home away from home.
Cremations are a big deal in Bali.
While living in Bali, Rachel ended up finding out about an online teaching job. As we didn’t exactly have plans for the next year, she went ahead and applied. It turned out to be a great opportunity and the perfect time to get hired. Over a year later, and we’re both teaching English online as our main source of income. With new online jobs also came newfound freedom, so we decided to explore a new part of the world and leave our new comfort zone in Asia.
PV from above.
This year started out in Mexico, where we ended up spending seven months living in another paradisiacal beach town – Puerto Vallarta. Since we only had to teach in the mornings, we had our afternoons free to pursue our other passions. I studied Spanish and worked on the blogs, while Rachel set about redesigning and promoting our site. All the hard work has finally started to pay off, as we’ve seen an increase in visitors and have been offered paid contributor gigs on other, more popular blogs. Of course, we still managed to find time for beachside Happy Hours.
We slowed down on the travel and decided to dig deep into places rather than just breeze through. After years of talking about it, we finally made it to South America. Instead of embarking on a hectic backpacking trip, though, we decided to spend at least a month in each country, with month-long stays in several cities. So far we’ve been in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and are about to head to Chile to end the year.
Reflecting on the whirlwind decade that I’ve experienced, it’s clear that teaching English changed my life. What started out as an act of desperation to hold me over until the economy bounced back has become a life of experience and adventure I never could have imagined. I just got a brand new passport and retired the old one, worn out and full of visas and stamps.
It all started with teaching English in China.
I’ve lived in three different countries and learned three different languages in that time, and I get paid to share those experiences with an audience all over the world. I’m still teaching English and am up at 5:30 most days for lots of phonics, songs, and games with cute kids in China. It’s funny to think back to my very first class in Beijing, when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in so many ways.
One year has turned into ten, and I see no end in sight. And why should I? There’s still so much of the world to see and so much to learn from it. The concept of life and work are constantly evolving, as us millennials and our avocado toast are gladly freeing ourselves from the shackles of normalcy to live a life of adventure and discovery. There are more opportunities now than ever before to see the world and do it on your terms. If you’re not sure where to start, may I suggest taking a chance and spending a year teaching English?
Sasha is an English teacher, videographer, and blogger from the suburbs of Detroit. He has taught English in China and studied Indonesian in Bali, and is currently doing the digital nomad thing as he travels around South America. He and his wife Rachel run Grateful Gypsies, where they write about living abroad, teaching ESL, live music and more.
