Scam alert

Forgive me father for my recollection may not be the best. I'll get you up to speed as best I can.

Number one rule in spotting a scam; if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. That's why I rolled my eyes when I talked to the recruiter. She definitely was overselling it. Get paid to travel. Experience a culture and a country through full immersion. Living abroad. Just a bachelor degree and a certificate. She asked when I graduated and I told her, she said she'd be in touch after I graduated. I forgot all about it.

So imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail two days after I graduated. I didn't respond at first. There was a tug inside me though. I've always been envious of those people, you know the ones. The people who spent a year in Singapore and two years in Argentina and a year and a half in Italy. I knew this about myself so rather than throwing caution to the wind I reined myself in. I was going to find people, on my own, who had worked with this company before. As always, my search started with Google.

I started my research with the assumption that this would be a scam. I did searches with titles like, "Adventure Teaching Scam" and "Teach abroad scam". I found plenty of scams, but the message boards I came across all had one theme in common. Adventure Teaching was a legit, if not the best, recruiting agency. The consensus was they were okay. I even found threads mentioning my recruiter by name.

I managed to track down three individuals on my own who had gone through the whole process and been hired. So probably not a scam.

It's funny, a part of me wanted it to be a scam. I could continue to grind down the path I was on, getting nowhere for years but staying in my comfort zone while telling myself I was making progress, but I would be betraying myself. When I upended my life five years ago I promised myself I would remain open to opportunity. I would live outside my comfort zone. I would hold myself accountable. I e-mailed my recruiter back.

The process after that was swift but thorough. I filled out several applications, went through three interviews and was offered a position teaching English in Zhangjiagang, China, in a little over a month. I now had less than six months to get my Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certificate, get the paperwork necessary for obtaining a visa and all the authentications required, figure out what the hell to do with all my stuff, get a laptop and phone, figure out finances, and learn a bit of Mandarin to name a few.

Easy? Sure, people do this all the time...