Teach & Study Abroad Horror Stories

Teach and Study Abroad Problems for Many

There is a huge difference between commercial schools and university departments and "language programs" as seperate faculties servicing universities. There are
huge and significant differences between the commercial schools too with some paying slave wages and housing teachers dormitory style, others paying hourly wages with no benefits and zero job security, and many schools operating openly outside all legal standards and regulations.

A friend of mine on his blog, Englishteacher... , wrote a story about a new teacher spending the first 24 hours in her Flat crying.

My mom's friend, a divorced mother in her fifties on somewhat of a whim, headed to Vietnam to become an English teacher and got violently ill while there and came back three months later for the holidays and just didn't return. She had had enough with getting sick, with the culture shock, and with the loneliness and her dislike for her co-workers and the American expatriate community in Vietnam. She thought she'd meet tons of interesting people but instead met angry, bitter, unhinged Americans who were there basically to run away from something back in the States. Not all experiences are bad, but you definitely have to do your research beforehand.

The last one was an "established" major national university in.....
No heat or hot water until spring (solar heating), no food, no plates or silverware or glassware, no telephone, no mail, no chalk or paper or pencils, no books and no syllabus. I had to pay the university to use my own computer in my office. Personal death threats from other university faculty. Racist threats from the doctor at the local church clinic. No pay and no return ticket (and accusations of fraud when requesting pay, and bills for electricity for using an electric heater). No work visa and illegal strip searches. No letter of employment after leaving. Gun battles at night and weekends, but free satellite TV. And from time to time, food (cooked and fresh-picked, and fresh eggs and cheeses at the door left by students' and their parents after dark.

Not all is perfect in The USA

When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, ‘Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.’ At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.

Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.