The Adventure Continues: We're Heading to Asia

Written by Kyle about Argentina. Feelin' excited
Kyle_excited
Sometimes you never know what's going to happen.  One day, we're planning on staying for a while in one of South American's most cosmopolitan citys, Buenos Aires, the next day, we are planning on flying across the Pacific Ocean to teach English in Korea. How did we arrive at this decision?

Trying to Make it in Buenos Aires
Well, basically, we found out pretty quickly that what we were planning to do in Buenos Aires wasn't going to work all that well.  Our plan was that I would pick up some freelance computer programming work from the US of A while Bessie would possibly teach English or do volunteer work.  The freelance work was a bit tough to get because without face-to-face communication, I was competing against people from all over the world willing to work for a tenth of the pay that I would.  Am I better than the people working for $8/hour?  Yes, but it is pretty hard to convince someone of that when the first thing they look it is the cost.

As for teaching English, the market is super tough in Buenos Aires, as basically half the native English speakers on the planet want to also teach English in Buenos Aires.  We could teach English for around $8/hour, but this is a bit deceiving as it doesn't include the cost for getting clients or traveling to them.  As Buenos Aires is quite the large city, that travel time could easily add up to half the day, of which we are not being paid.  On top of that, the culture is not of one to set an appointment and stick with it.  So, I'm sure there would be more than once where an English teaching appointment would be cancelled, leaving yet more unpaid time.

Could we have both worked and made a go of it in BA?  Yes, we could have, but it would mean living on the super cheap and leaving us very little wiggle room for enjoyment.  We like BA and all, just not enough to consider living in this manner.  We don't want to just live, we want to enjoy ourselves.

How About the Kitchen Sink?
Ok, so now we had figured out that doing our thing in Buenos Aires probably wasn't going to work.  So, we then started looking at basically every other opportunity we could find on the planet.  Literally.  We were both applying for just about anything globally that met our skill set.  For me, I can say that there is no lack of job oppurtunities in the US of A in the technology sector, many of which I had employers interested in hiring me.  But, ultimately, after considering those and other things, we decided on South Korea.  Why?

The Korean Decision
For one, South Korea offers financial gains that would be hard for us to match.  Our flight there and back is paid for as well as our housing and half of our insurance costs.  Then, on top of that, we are paid about $1500-$1750 / month each to teach on a 40-hour schedule.  So, when we extrapolate what we spend daily on food, fun, and other things, we ran some calculations and figured that we could save over $20,000 in a year.  That's a number that is hard to attain by both of us working and living in the States.

Of course, we're not the kind of people to make decisions soley based on financials.  Basically, we made the decision based on the 10-year rule: if we looked back on the decision 10 years from now, which one would we regret the least?  Based on this, it is pretty easy to assume that we might regret not continuing traveling to settle down back home.  I mean, how many opportunities are we going to have to live and work in Asia, especially after we have children and a house/condo and/or other resonsibilities to think about?

Everything is Based on Happiness
On top of everything, though, we think that going to South Korea will be a great experience and it will give us a lot of good memories.  And really, we're out to live a happy, fulfilling life just like anyone else, and we think our experiences there will allow us to do that.  If you don't believe me, even science says so: buy life experiences, not stuff and that will lead to happiness.  (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090207150518.htm)  If there's one thing we've learned while traveling the past year it's that we want to continue living in a way that is fulfilling and rewarding to us.  While our lifestyle may not be for all people, we certainly enjoy it and want to continue living our lives in a manner that gives us the highest degree of personal happiness.

The Near Future
We'll be heading back to Chicago and Kansas City for 1-2 months while we get some documents together and weigh the various teaching positions available to us.  We'll continue to report from those locations as a tourist, as we have discovered there are many things in our hometowns that we have yet to do or see.  You'll also see an upcoming post about the wild Carnaval celebration that we went to in Argentina; I would write it now, but we're still recovering from the lack of sleep.

Don't Touch That Dial!!
So, stay tuned with us as we learn Korean, drink and eat more strange things, and probably get ourselves confused as we explore the other half of the world.

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