The principle that defines my lifestyle is simple: I don’t travel to get stamps in my passport. I travel to experience the cultures and peoples of the world. When I visit a place, I want to know what life is really like for the people who live there. I want to know the history of the neighborhoods they live in, what they do for fun at the end of the month when they are out of money, what kind of social gatherings their parents make them go to, etc. etc. In essence, I don’t want to just see the buildings and eat the food, I want to live the life.

For this reason, my blog is likely to be different from the travel blogs that you are used to seeing. I’ve always believed that it is better to spend a lot of time in one place, than a little time in a lot of places. That is the reason that I have chosen to work in other countries as a means of getting to know them. I like to stay put and see the sides of life there that other bloggers might find mundane.

Over the last 10 years, I have worked in six different countries: Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. I’ve traveled to thirty plus countries (see below). I’ve made a lot of amazing friends, seen a lot of amazing places, eaten a lot of amazing food, and taken a lot of amazing pictures. All of this has been made possible by essentially falling ass-backwards into the profession of teaching English as a Second Language.

And this is probably where you come in. On this site, I offer a lot of first hand advice on how to teach English abroad as a means of experiencing meaningful travel. I decided to do this because, in my experience, a lot of the advice out there is extremely biased. It’s typically offered by recruiters or employers trying to steer would-be teachers in one way or another. I do my best here to offer unbiased advice about how to navigate opportunities abroad. I take the same approach with my travel pieces. Not every place is for everyone, and I’m not afraid to give my honest opinions.

Teaching English abroad may not be the best way to travel – it is work, after all – but it is full cultural immersion. So if you are interested in the kind of travel and/or lifestyle that I have described above, visit my guides page and learn how you can them yours too!