How To Survive Living Abroad
The next of English Teacher X's ebooks that I have read is subtitled An expatriate guide to not getting robbed, scammed, jailed or killed. In pre-Skype days, I was living in a place in SE Asia where the internet was expensive and used to use an internet cafe across the road Most days I heard someone phoning home to ask their family to send them some money as they'd been robbed. The risks he's talking about are very real, and the first part of the book makes a lot of sense.
The book's a common sense guide to working abroad and is very good on the topics of finance visas, health and other practicalities. It's foul mouthed and aggressive, so the easily offended might be advised to steer clear of it, but its core is sound. ESL is full of people who think that things abroad will be like home in terms of laws and standards with different cuisines and an exotic element. If you do, this book will set you right on that. For someone associated with the sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll end of living abroad, ETX is very good at giving sound financial and legal advice.
I found the second half about sex, drugs and alcohol less interesting, which is strange as these are often said to be his specialist areas. It picks up again when talking about security. It's a patchy and uneven book and I found myself skipping over bits, but there are very good sections and a lot of it rings very true. The person thinking about teaching English abroad would lose nothing by reading it and might gain a lot.
Categories: General
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