Are you renting both the land and home?
Not sure what the deal is with that in Canada, but that’s a nightmare in America given the lack of oversight and laws protecting renters.
He said it was a long-term land lease aka a leasehold. Some mobile homes are put on lots which are leased for periods like 30 years or 99 years. You can sell the lease, transferring it to another person. I’d read about such things but never encountered anyone who had lived on such terms.
I’m surprised the market isn’t saturated. I went to school with at least five weirdos with asian fetishes who have all taught in either Japan or Vietnam.
There are 130 million Japanese, most of whom are atrocious at English but have a need or desire to learn it.
There will always be English teaching jobs available in Japan.
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Awesome JT!
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Considered teaching in Japan in 2008.
Opted for South Korea since I had friends teaching there. Teaching there sucked balls but it paid well relative to the cost of living.
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Teaching English for a living does indeed suck balls in most situations. Thankfully I never had to do it full time, though I did supplement my income with a little teaching here and there when I was a student.
But if you’re a young person looking for a way to support yourself while you experience living in a foreign country, it’s a good easy way to make a decent income and secure a visa.
Why does teaching there suck?
Just a toxic workplace. Only foreigner in the entire school. Xenophobia from colleagues wasn’t subtle.
Helped me empathize with people who deal with that shit everyday.
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We’re looking at Canada, Costa Rica, Portugal, Spain for potential destinations if it becomes clear that our kids will have better lives outside the US. Any suggestions for narrowing this down and/or adding additional countries to the watchlist? Our jobs are both in pretty high demand (psychologist, speech-language pathologist) in most places.
Thanks, and much love to everyone else facing the next few months/years of uncertainty.
What legal avenues do you have to get to any of those places?
Theoretically we can get to Canada via jobs and the other three via investment visas.
I don’t know any details but I know there was a push in the last few years to recruit doctors to Alberta. Not sure if that included psychologists.
My nephew got croup in Paris as a toddler, got his ambulance ride, ER visit, and medication for free.
I (briefly) taught English in Japan in 2000. The school that hired us was run by yakuza, which was not a good thing.
Private English schools in Spain didn’t bother hiding their tax evasion from employees.
An academy owner I worked for was planning a midnight run, leaving the school without an owner without notice. He was so desperate that he was willing to give me control of its operations should he run for it (leaving his daughter behind). Pretty sure he was in with some shady characters.
I lived in Spain for a bit over 3 years.
With Spain, they only hire from outside of the EU if they cannot find anybody from within the European Union to fill a job. Simply put, I haven’t met a single American permanently residing in Spain that wasn’t a dual-citizen with some EU country.
Czech Republic is a bit easier in some ways since you can get an independent contractor license though I suggest you hire a company to help you if you go this route. The paperwork process is byzantine. If you want to get enough work in psychology to make a living, you’ll need to know Czech because there are a ton of multilingual psychologists with degrees from America or the UK already here.
Thanks everyone. Obviously we wouldn’t plan on working anywhere (at least in our primary careers) without achieving professional language fluency. I’m confident re: my ability to relearn Spanish at this level. Less so Czech, but we’d be moving anywhere with the intention to stay long-term - so the motivation is there.
I’m trying to learn Czech and it’s a nightmare.
Learning it makes you a better person than me.
I’m going to look into it more since it’s my number 1 option but I’m pretty sure I’ve read that you can get residency in Costa Rica by keeping $30K in a Costa Rican bank account. If I end up leaving the U.S. I really don’t care about keeping my pharmacy license, I’ll probably be happier working in a coffee shop or restaurant anyhow. My mother was born in Czech Republic but she came here when she was 11 and I don’t speak a lick so I don’t think I’d be able to get in there.