About
I graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN with a major in Spanish and a minor in Economics. With no clue as to my life’s calling, I decided to move to Taiwan with the intentions to teach English for a year. A full year later, I’m planning to stay in Taipei and see what the fates have in store.
I was a Taiwanese girl growing up in America; now I’m an American girl growing up in Taiwan. Cultures clash, traditions mix, languages blend… and it’s all one big mess. These are my adventures as an American looking like a Taiwanese but acting like an American in Taiwan. Confused yet? I certainly am.
Contact me at tinawu08 [at] gmail [dot] com.
I work with John Bardos of JetSetCitizen.com and YouCanTeachEnglish.com and we would love to interview you by email to ask you some questions about teaching English in Taiwan. It should only take about 30 minutes of your time and we will promote your interview on Twitter and StumbleUpon. Please let me know if you are interested.
Thanks!
I found the whole Taiwanese-Americans-living-in-Taiwan experience very fascinating, and have been adding blogs and following tweets of this sort. I wished I had done the same upon graduating, but Taipei in those days (ahem) wasn’t quite the same as now. Still, I enjoyed my trips to Taiwan in recent year, particularly the one I took this past November.
Thanks for reading, kaifu!
Tina,
I have been reading and enjoying your blog about your experiences teaching English in Taiwan. I wondered if you would be able to give my wife and I some info about how to go about doing job searches for teaching english in Taipei. I’d really appreciate any advice or help you could give us in our plans. We are just starting our job search and didn’t know if you had any websites or schools we should contact or any that we should maybe avoid?? Your blog is great and I hope I get to write one if we do end up finding something over there. Thanks so much. Matt
Hi Matt,
You should definitely look into http://www.tealit.com. It’s a great resource for foreigners teaching English in Taiwan, ranging from housing listings to job listings and lots of other information.
esl99.com also has job listings to give you an idea of who’s hiring, where they’re located, what to expect.
Another great resource to contact is asianconsultants.com, and they set English teachers up with teaching positions around Taipei. You could send them an email to let them know you’re coming, but asides from the big schools like Hess or Giraffe, most of the other schools would want to meet you in person when you get here so it’s harder to guaranteed a job before you land in Taipei. Hope this helps, feel free to send me any more questions.
Tina, Thanks so much for responding and suggesting the websites. I have been looking them up and it seems that I either need to make contact with the schools (emailing seems to be the slowest, and I hear calling is a better way of contacting them) or an agency. I wondered about how much using asian consultants will cost? Did you use them, or do you know anyone who did and how much they were charged? I have emailed them but am not sure how long they will take to respond. Thanks again for your help.
I did use Asian Consultants, and they charged the school the fee instead of me.
Hey tina,
nice blog
I’m trying to weigh up between vietnam and taiwan for my next stint! Im irish but the last 4 years i’ve been living in Korea, Thailand and now Australia. Going to Malaysia to study part-time but thinking about setting up in Taiwan and studying by correspondence for my MA. How much money do u manage to save each month there? Have u been to Vietnam?
I can save about 20,000-30,000NT a month. I spend most of my money on food and eating out. No, I haven’t been to Vietnam but I do have a friend there teaching English now.