Getting a Teaching Job in China: Pros and Cons

Something happens when you choose to follow a dream.

My dream has been to live, work, and create a community in different countries; living everyday life beside different people in a new and varied culture. For me, becoming an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher with English 1 has provided me with the opportunity to fulfil my dream.

Living a dream comes with a whole host of life hashtags and realities. There are challenges when you leave the familiar anchor of family and culture. These challenges might include finances that tie you to a place and people, or familial obligations that are both right and binding. There’s also the thought of one’s future and what jumping into living a dream means for that future. These are all legitimate and real concerns.

There are also the very real challenges of living and adjusting to a new country: the food and water, the infrastructure, the weather and climate, the cost of living, the politics and their impact (or correlation) to your nationality, and all that entails. Not to mention the cultural differences that, on the surface, might seem insurmountable. And if you work in a new country, there are all the added complexities of adapting to a new company culture and working with new colleagues. The challenges are real, and they exist, but these sorts of challenges are a part of everyday living, no matter where we are.

There are challenges when you begin living in a new and different country. Essentially, you begin to do things again for the first time in a new language, with new currency (both monetary and otherwise), new customs, and not to mention finding your way around a new place. That saying, “When in Rome…”, well, it’s true. Adapting to new ways of doing things and how things are done is no easy task. You learn a lot about life and living, mostly because you learn a lot about yourself in the process of adapting, adjusting, and settling ‘in’ to a new place and space.

People are both incredible and challenging at the same time. Learning a new culture, both in the community and in the workplace, is equally challenging. When you actually live and set up life in a new country, there are myriad ways in which a person is impacted. This includes learning to step outside your own little world, broadening your thinking, and opening your heart to the many different ways of being and doing even the simplest things. It's hard to imagine and difficult to describe the experience of change that comes from sharing space, realising the innate gratitude of a people, a community that accepts your presence in their space. When you look at it this way, it’s not an entitlement you’re taking, but rather a gift that is given to you — the gift of actually living in a new country.

Learning and becoming part of a new community takes patience and sincere interest. Patience, because the need to belong is within us all. The need to be acknowledged and to be able to engage in community activities are things some of us need as well. These things don’t just come to someone; they are gradually gathered (not really ‘earned’, per se) by simply living and being, by adapting and accepting what is.

I don’t mean to sound ethereal or vague in a woo-woo way. So, let me write more plainly. When you set up home — whether long term, short term, or for any length of time — in a new country, you are a guest. It’s really like staying at someone’s home for a visit. You need your space and have your personal requirements, but still, you are a guest and must abide by and adapt to your hosts. It is very much the same when living in a new country. There are the obvious laws and regulations you must respect, but more deeply, there is the culture of the people in the community that you must learn and adjust to. If you are working, there is also a culture and way of doing business that you must learn and adjust to. These are the gifts of discovery for you. It is in this discovery, at least for me, that I am finding incredible personal growth internally.

Culturally, where we come from — our family, our country’s people, our nation — all leave an indelible stamp on our being, on our psyche, our way of thinking, our way of doing things, and they impact the way we interpret others and the world. When you live in a new country, besides new people with a new and different way of being, thinking, and doing everything, you are forever changed inside in every way. You cannot help but be changed. And, if you are willing, with an open mind and an open heart, the changes you experience will be incredible and profound.