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China advice bleg

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I've basically made the decision to continue serving or working abroad after my Peace Corps service in South Africa is over, probably in China or Taiwan as I would like to learn a bit of standard Mandarin and gain some perspective on an up-and-coming power. I've talked a few people who lived there or are currently working there right now who have been enormously helpful, but I'm trying to get as broad a perspective as possible. If you have any advice, contacts, or other thoughts you wouldn't mind sharing, I would be much indebted if you would leave a comment or shoot me an email.

UPDATE: It seems that extending my Peace Corps service is out. Apparently your close of service date needs to line up closely with the beginning of service date for the desired country, and Peace Corps is fairly inflexible about COS dates here. So take that into consideration, I guess.
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  1. RebeccaSeptember 1, 2010 at 8:06 AM

    are you sure? lydia told kristen that she could probably transfer to a program where pst starts as early as may, and I know that education vols from sa have gone to china in the past, you should ask if you haven't already...

    ReplyDelete
  2. RyanSeptember 1, 2010 at 9:29 AM

    Well, that's just what McGrath told me in an email and also what was contained in a Peace Corps policy document she attached. I emailed Morgan weeks ago with no response (shocking, right?). I also cced Lydia on the email to McGrath, so hopefully she'll get back to me if that is the case.

    In any case, one of my good friends from college can apparently help me find a job at a university over there, so I'm not super concerned.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RebeccaSeptember 1, 2010 at 11:04 AM

    yeah you can do basically the same job and actually get paid for it, i guess the only advantage to pc is that you get language training but I'm sure you can pay someone to tutor you or take a class somewhere

    ReplyDelete
  4. RyanSeptember 2, 2010 at 8:07 AM

    Well, I've recently got in touch with Lydia asked for clarification. I'll keep you posted on what she says.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2010 at 12:48 AM

    You could go somewhere were you could actually learn the language to a comfortable conversational level in a year, aka Latin America. Also, I hear that there are cool people there.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2010 at 12:51 AM

    oops, I meant "where you could actually learn the language in a year"

    ReplyDelete

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