5 ways to make your friends back home jealous of your TEFL life
A TEFL life is a wonderful thing: Traveling from place to place, meeting new people, changing lives. But if an awesome adventure happens and no one else is there to see just how awesome it is, is it an awesome adventure at all? Yes, obviously. But don’t worry, there are ways you can ensure there’s always someone around to notice just how darn cool you’ve become after taking the plunge into the teaching world.
Use vintage snail mail
Move over Instagram and Facebook, because the age-old snail mail still reigns supreme on the making-your-mates-jealous front. Yep, there’s nothing that says “wish you were here” more than a postcard scrawled with your very own handwriting. Choose what’s on the front wisely, of course – a rolling Balinese surf swell, perhaps; a sweeping vista of Vietnam’s cascading coffee plantations, maybe. Then it’s just a case of dropping in tantalizing titbits about your adventures. Mention just how blinding white those tropical Thai sands where last week. Wax lyrical about the taste of steaming Hong Kongese dim sum. Pack it full of inspiring travel teasers.
Keep a travel blog
You don’t have to be Michael Palin to justify writing about your life on the road. Nope, you just need something to write about. Last time we checked, a boundary-breaking adventure to teach English between the misty mountains of Vietnam, between the sizzling street-food stalls of Bangkok, or the snaking Great Wall of China certainly qualifies as “something to write about”. That’s probably why there are oodles of excellent TEFL and travel blogs all over the web these days. Why not throw your hat in the ring and start documenting your own peregrinations? Any mates that see it might just be tempted to get qualified and start their own adventure!
Fill your Insta feed with awesome shots
No matter if it’s a steep-sided mountain gorge with a mysterious Taiwanese monastery at its end, a soaring outline of the snowy Himalaya, a pastel-painted Mexican pueblo, or just a shimmering strip of white sand on the side of a Thai island, you can rest assured that any snapshot of your TEFL life will work its magic on at least some of your friends back at home. You can all but force them to watch how darn amazing your world has become since completing that 120-hour course by filling your Instagram to the brim with reams of wanderlust-inducing images. Alternatively, you could direct them to the myTEFL Instagram, where there’s plenty already a-waiting!
Prove what TEFL can let you do
There’s nothing that will niggle at the nine-to-five workers back in your hometown more than a constant reminder of the freedom and flexibility you can gain from being qualified to teach English abroad. One month you could be spending your weekends trawling through the soy-scented bazaars of Beijing, the next leading classes beneath the spiked summits of the South American Andes, the next hiking trails in the Italian Alps. But you don’t even need to move that often. You just need to show your buddies how time away from the office is spent when you’re living abroad: Hitting Buddhist temples instead of binging on TV; lazing on tropical beaches instead of huddling under an umbrella. You catch the drift.
Return home a new you
A TEFL life at its best can help to change characters. That’s not some far-fetched mantra about personality and inner being, either. It’s a reflection on what breaking away from the comfort zone, encountering new peoples, faiths, and places, and learning all-new things can help you achieve. When you get back from that next teaching placement, be sure to showcase your prowess in the native lingo with phrases of Cantonese or Vietnamese or Spanish. Be sure to cook up a smorgasbord of taste-bud-tingling treats in the way only someone who’d actually been to Rajasthan or Bangkok would know how. You’ll soon see your new skills and abilities coming through.
Have you discovered any other ways to make your home mates jealous of that newfound TEFL life? We’d sure love to hear them in the comments below. Or, if you’re already sufficiently tempted to hit the road for a teaching adventure of your own, how about getting qualified with a myTEFL course?