Skip to main content

China advice bleg

Image
By
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.
Labels:

Comments

  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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Setswana Grammar Manual

By
One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .
6 comments
Read more

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

By
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...
4 comments
Read more

Russiagate and the Left, Round II

By
Corey Robin has responded to my article arguing that the left should take the Trump-Russia story more seriously . I do appreciate that he considers me an ally, and I feel the same towards him. However I am not convinced. The points I want to make are somewhat disconnected, so I will just take them one at a time. What should be done? Robin complains that I don't give much attention to the question of how we should respond to Russian electoral espionage. As an initial matter, the question of whether a problem is an important one is logically distinct from what the response should be. There is a sizable vein of skepticism about Russiagate on the left, and the argument of the post was that skepticism was misplaced. Solutions can be worked out later. This point is rather similar to the centrist argument that you can't talk about Medicare for All unless you've got a fully costed-out bill detailing all the necessary taxes and regulation. However, I have advanced some pol...
4 comments
Read more