Job Discussion Forums

[ghost]

Foreign teachers in Cambodia are priviledged when you consider these facts.

1. State salaries for teachers in Cambodia are fixed at $25 a month. In private schools Cambodian teachers can clear around $30 a month.

2. Native speakers from U.S.A. and Canada earn between $7 to $12 an hour.

3. The schools do not provide accommodation, but very decent apartments for foreigners can be had for about $200 a month. These are upscale flats designed for foreigners, not Khmers.

4. A native speaker earning $800 a month ($10 an hour for 80 hours a month or 20 hours a week) would have costs like this.

A. Salary - $800

B. Rent - $200

C. Food - $100. Eating out is so cheap that there is hardly any difference between cooking at home or eating out. But this means eating in Khmer, hole in the wall establishments.

D. Transport. Most teachers get to and from school using a motorbike, purchased for between $500 to $800. If using public motorbikes, count on 50 cents a ride for a total of about $2 a day to get to and from work and go to the shops - total $60 a month.

E. Miscellaneous expenses - $100 a month.

After all of the above the teacher is left with around $300 -$350 a month.

Only the best teachers getting salaries in the range of $15 an hour in schools like "Home of English" can save $500 or more. The other teachers can supplement their salaries with tutoring on the side.

To get back to the point about the awful 3 hour teaching blocks in Turkey. This was common practice throughout the language schools in Eskisehir. All these schools have many students electing the Tuesday - Thursday 6-9pm schedule, and that is the area where you have the most problems with student retention and satisfaction.

The school administrators there are still too dumb to realize that someone who has been to University or at work all day will not have a lot of energy or motivation to study English for three hours.

The Cambodian system is much better, because studying 4 days a week at between 1-2 hours is a much more efficient way to do it.

This poster will not elect domicile in Cambodia, because the quality of life here is not good. One can not even go out to eat without being assaulted by a bunch of "smiley, smiley" beggars....and nothing wrong with those people, but at the end of the day one cannot support a whole nation, and yes - about 95% of the nation live in abject poverty on less than $1 U.S. a day. The language barrier is another issue that is tough to deal with. Only a small minority of people speak English, and even then, their register of English is confined to their needs - they know all the words to sell you something or get you a taxi, etc....not exactly stimulating.

The cultural divide here is huge, and the "smiley, smiley" people make you feel like a freak as you walk down the street - you can hear them laughing at the sight of a 6.3 inch bizarre alien trundling down the street. Yes - we stick out like sore thumbs, next to these miniscule people who all look svelt and around 5ft in height. In the final analysis, we are welcome here as long as we keep out pumping the dollars - if we don't we are not. That is the stark reality in all of Asia. You get tired of the subtle harrassment on a daily basis to take motorbike taxis, visit the "Killing Fields" and other tourist banalities.

Some teachers come here for the drugs and/or women - but how much of that can you do anyway? At the end of the day you need a goal in life, and it is hard to go forward here. The pace of life here moves at a glacial speed, in contrast to the torrid temperatures.

Tomorrow, a bus trip from Phnom Penh (Cambodia) to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) is on the cards, and the contrast between the two countries should be interesting. The journey lasts 9 hours.

Yaramaz is doing well in Turkey, because she is prepared to take the good with the bad, and is positive enough to focus on the good. People with negative natures and type A personalities do not do well in Turkey because the inherently lazy culture is frustrating and leads many to despair over the long haul.

[yaramaz]

Thank you ghost. What you said is true about the individual's temperament and attitude affecting their ability to adapt to a place. Iam an almost ridiculously patient and positive type-b personality, which lets me still set goals but not needing to plough through my life with only the goals in mind. So far I have achieved a lot of things in my life and I have reached many of my goals... but I am really happy to be diverted and thrown off track along the way because such blips can lead to such interesting journeys... Maybe that's why I like Turkey (and I say this because the sun is shining gorgeously, my week has been pretty smooth, and it is friday...). My life here shifts so rapidly, from day to day, sometimes hour to hour--- new people enter it, new journeys arise, new words and concepts are learned, etc, etc.

Ghost, I wonder if you will ever find a home. I understand your restlessness but I am also not sure you will ever find a country that fits your needs exactly... at least one outside of N. America and Europe and parts of NE Asia--- you seem to need a fast and efficient pace, focussed and educated populace, and a well organised infrastructure. I could be mistaken, but that was the impression I got from your postings. I totally understand the need for intellectual stimuli... and I think you could have found it here if you had waited a little longer. The first half of my first year was very different from my life now, both in my friendships and my communications. My circle is much wider now, and much more diverse.

May I ask you... what are your goals? I mean in concrete terms? How do you plan to achieve them? I am curious. You always talked about the bigger picture... I have a bigger picture too, but it seems to allow a lot more diversions and side tracks and second thoughts... I'm still working toward several concrete plans that I know Ican pull together in the next few years. turkey has yet to destroy them!!!

[ghost]

In this poster's case, goals are needed to get through the day - without which depression sets in.....

As a former athlete (marathon runner with best of 2:30 mins.) my goals were in the sporting area, but with age, injuries and early onset arthritis in the right hip, other goals are needed.

Educational goals are one, and applications for Ph.D. studies in Canada fell through for September 2004, because one was not able to get the complete packages in.

Right now, goals would include learning a new language and searching for an alternative career to teaching ESL, which, with all due respect, is not a career in most settings. There are too many variables to deal with in the field of ESL which make it less than professional in nature.

This whole trip in South East Asia is an exploration of different countries and cultures, with the aim of seeing whether it might be worth settling there for a while. Based on what one has experienced so far, the feeling is that this part of the world is not for one. It is all very well to be surrounded by "smiley, smiley" people, but the cultural divide is one that will never be bridged, and one gets fed up with being perceived as a foreigner here. You must realize that the intrinsic meaning of "foreigner" has a negative connotation, especially in most parts of Asia. There are many clubs we cannot even go to because we are foreigners, and most of the restaurants set their prices in U.S. dollars for foreigners...you just feel like you are being taken advantage of.

This message is being posted from Saigon (South Vietnam), a huge metropolis of some 8 million people, 3 million of whom get around on motorcycles. The whole street scene is chaotic, and worse than Cairo, which at least has public buses and not all these motorcycles zooming around, making your life a misery here.

Yaramaz is a type B personality, and one could say she is fortunate, because she is content to go with the flow and not get bogged down in constant goals and schedules.

Other people (type A's) cannot change their basic nature, and they are unfortunate in the sense that they harbour a lot of hostility to the world and their impatience in general contributes to a host of health problems in the long run. Many type A's are good suicide candidates because they are unwilling to compromise.

Finally, those people who travel half way across the planet to find "happiness" rarely do so, because they bring with them their past emotional baggage, and that cannot be changed.

[yaramaz]

Ghost, that was a really good, thoughtful post, and it answers a lot of the questions I have been asking you for months, amidst the mud slinging of previous threads. I think it all boils down to a simple case of To Each Their Own.