Strawberry Rhubarb

I know.. This might not be quite what you wanted but if you only want to do it for a while, some of the cruise lines hire TESL instructors for there staff. I know that MSC and I think Costa has them. You could at least be in the med and you get free room and board. Otherwise check out countries outside the EU. My families been in NA too long for me to qualify for anything through ancestry either. Though I think France still has programs where you can come and work for a year if your under 35.

Ah, that’s a great tip, actually. Thanks! I was interested in cruise lines back in high school but never thought you could combine both ideas, so-to-speak. That’s my problem too, not being able to get an EU passport. I read that Canada actually has bilateral arrangements with quite a few European countries, such as Sweden, Norway, and Germany, where youth up to 35 can travel and work. You’d think since our country has these agreements, it would be easier to find TESL-related work. Do you have any TESL experience?

Only informally in India. Otherwise one of my ex-coworkers quit her job to teach English in Rome. It was easy for her as she had an Italian passport. My cousin and several of her friends taught ESL in Korea, both legally and illegally. One of them had a good enough experience that he returned after he finished his Phd until he got a job in his field. Another or my old coworkers has a son who has taught in China for almost 10 years now.

I have worked on a cruise ship if you have any questions about that!

Apparently Princess Cruises hire ESL teachers as well. Here’s a blog from one

http://cruisingprincess.blogspot.ca/

The company that recruits for them in Canada is based in Vancouver I think.

Wow, teaching in India must have been quite the experience. Same as working on a cruise ship! One of my cousins worked as a blackjack dealer for years with a cruise line and while he loved his job, he said that you really never got to see anything since the employees didn’t have much time to explore when the ship would dock. Plus he commented that nasty bugs would go around due to the relatively cramped environment, so the living conditions aren’t so glamorous. Would you say the same thing? Oh man, I would love to hear about your experiences!

I know some people who have taught English in Korea and the experiences have been so mixed. I guess it depends on the employer.

Thank you so much for the link!

I have a friend currently in Korea teaching English (and loving it), and know quite a few more than have done so in various Asian countries. Also have a gal pal that worked on a cruise ship for many years, and now works in the travel industry. I can put you in contact with her if you’d like to pick her brain, too.

Are you Canadian? There are a few programs here for teaching ESL overseas, as well as immersive French instruction on a bursary basis. I can look them up if you want and message you with the info.

Oh, don’t worry about it, but thanks for the offer! I am Canadian, and was wondering doing something here too since it seems like so many jobs here require previous experience, and not only that, but they stress that the experience must be local. Ugh. That seems quite universal for all jobs though. Everyone wants an experienced employee.

Your experience can depend on many things, your job, the cruise line, the intinerary, the size of the ship your on etc. I worked selling duty free on a relatively small ship that was in port almost every day. The Cruise line I was on did not give us days we were required to stay on board if we weren’t working because we had enough nationals that couldn’t disembark at certain destinations and enough staff that would have to stay onboard because of their jobs that they were always able to meet minimum crew requirements. The ship I was on did not have a tuck shop that remained open and all casinos and df stores were closed at port so we were only forced to stay onboard if we had a shipment coming in or we were doing inventory. To be honest the casino crew and df group had the most opportunities to explore ports on the ship I worked on and if we wanted to we could go on pax tours if we were willing to audit the tour and tour guide and help keep track of the guests. We also helped to provide a known and friendly face to the guests as many stay on for more than one cruise and you get to know some of them quite well. But even those I know who worked in other departments got usually at least 2 days off a week to explore ports.

As to living conditions. Most crew live in the lower decks of the ship. You usually don’t have a port hole or window and you usually have to share. The rooms have bunk beds, a locker/closet, a bathroom and a desk and tv with dvd player and a phone. Many officers and managers and senior staff in their position have their own rooms and may have windows and some of them have rooms in upper decks usually where the bridge is. Health among crew members was closely monitored on the ship I was on. If you even have a sniffle when you join the ship they will not let you even embark without being checked out by the nurse and if more serious the Doctor. People with potentially contagious illnesses more serious than a cold are put into isolation, given medicine, food and medical treatment. Pills, cough syrup, injections and tests are covered by the cruise line unless you need something more serious because of this you have to have a basic medical and evacuation insurance. Food safety was taken to the extreme on the ship I was on and standards were very high. Crew food can range highly depending on the cruise line. As an Esl teacher you would probably eat in the officer mess and depending on the ship you might be able to eat in passenger areas. There is usually private outside areas for the crew, though depending on your position you may be allowed into pax areas and maybe permitted to see show, events etc. There are also Gyms, computers and crew bars available for just the crew. I honestly did not spend very much time in my room. If we weren’t on a tour we were allowed to disembark after the pax usually by around 9:30 at the latest and we had to be back at least an hour before departure. On turnaround destinations where we were sometimes at port for 3 days I would have close to 3 days off in port. The ship I was on spent 1.5 month in a baltic cruise from Dover to stokholm, with a Norwegian, British Isles tour thrown in, the we repositioned into the Med and did a complete circuit of the Med before heading to Miami where I left to return to my regular job. Altogether, I visited around 25 countries in less than 5 months. It was a really international experience meeting people from all over the world who were working on the ship for many different reasons and were from many different economic classes. It’s like a study of world politics, and culture all thrown in. Many of the people are absolutely amazing and some choose to continue with this line of work even if they don’t have to.. I have a friend from Bosnia who’s quite a good photographer and who’s career is quite booming right now but he’s back on the ships as I write.

Thinking about it I met a Calgarian in France who worked in ESL in Calgary and was able to work in Germany for six months through an exchange at the work place. ( I think she worked for one of those language schools that has ESL programs for international students as well as courses for those who wanted to learn other languages locally)

Do you have any close Italian ancestry? If so you might qualify for citizenship. ( up to you gg grandfather I think)

Your working conditions sound a lot better than my cousin’s, which is great to hear. That definitely sounds like an amazing experience, and a great way to travel the world without sinking into massive debt. I know I’m sounding negative, but have you ever heard of weird crimes occurring on cruise lines? There was a TV show, like W5 or something, that did a segment of people going missing on cruise ships, being murdered, etc. I know that could happen virtually anywhere but it’s so bizarre that it happens when you’d think there’s always be someone relatively close by.

That is awesome to hear about a Calgarian doing that! I guess that shows that it’s not entirely impossible for a Canadian to land a job in western Europe after all. You never know without trying. Places like Oxford Seminars are also supposed to provide job placement services for you but I’ve read many people online slam them and say it’s a hoax.

And I unfortunately do not have any Italian ancestry whatsoever. I think one of my great grandparents might have been born in Ukraine and another in Austria but with those countries, I don’t think that would be enough. Oh well!

I don’t think so.. It’s funny I was just looking at the Austrian ones to see if it would work out for my cousin’s son!

It actually was an awesome working holiday. You do have to be careful.. I have a friend who did duty free on one of the Cunard ships who ended up in hospital after months of little to know breaks because he was going back and forth between the uk and New York all the time so it was all sea days ( which translates to 14 hour work days for df) and even though he had half days and days off port days were usually absorbed by shipments so he didn’t feel like he had a break. If you run into those type of situations it pays to have a good relationship with both the safety officer and the doctor because both could pull you off the job and ensure you get rest.

I didn’t really here about anything about horrible crimes like that. I know theft happens, but on the other hand people came into my room to clean it and change my bedding and often you need to leave laundry alone in the laundry room and nothing ever disappeared. I did have friends who experienced poor conditions and had to share rooms with lots of people when they had worked for some other cruise lines. I had one friend who had to abandon ship twice but he’s been on the cruise ships for 30 + years. These things don’t really scare me as a lot of my jobs have had elements of risk in them. I’ve worked on wildlife studies in Northern Ontario, on my own in the Dry Tropical forests in Ecuador and for Airlines.

The company that I did work for had a run in with Somali pirates sometime before 2009 when repositioning into the Indian Ocean. They asked all of the pax to remain in there cabins and sent all available power to the engines they outran them and the pax that were there saw it all as a great adventure. I imagine that murders etc are possible, Some of the large ships have over 6000 people onboard and are basically floating cities with all of the problems found with in. There are space restrictions but it is possible to find privacy. It pays to bear in mind that as part of a crew you become part of the crew family onboard. People will get to know you and will look out for you. They know when your late or missing. Get to know some of the security guys they will look out for you. You have to scan on or off the ship. It didn’t happen on the ship I was on but on some of the ships crew members have gone missing usually it’s because they have gone to seek asylum, that’s why some countries have long lists of nationalities that they will not allow to disembark.

It really is a cool way to see the world. I technically worked for a concession company but we were fully integrated into the crew of the cruise line and you tended to be sent back to the cruise line you worked for before unless you asked to be sent elsewhere, they hated you, or the timing didn’t work out. The cruise line I worked for did the baltics and the med and Alaska in the summer and South America, Australasia in the winter. They have begun experimenting with Africa. Although I had traveled quite a bit before, I went to many places I had never been before including several places in Norway, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, , St Petersburg Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Warenmunde ( Germany), Bruges, Isle of Skye, Edinburgh, a port in Cornwall, Bordeaux( we docked right in front of city hall), Saint- Malo, a couple smaller ports in France that I hadn’t visited before when I was there. Porto and Lisbon, A couple of ports in Spain including Barcelona. Marseille, Monte Carlo, Lots of places in Italy some I had beet to but I also got to go to Cinque Terra, Sicily, and a couple of others I hadn’t been to. Dubrovnik, a port in Macedonia, A week and a half of greek ports. Istanbul, Kushadasi, Haifa and Tel Aviv, Cyprus, Alexandria and a port for Cairo, Tunisia, Malta, a port in Morroco before stopping in the Azores than stopping in Bermuda than Miami. Really it’s amazing.

yyz, that sounds incredible! Thanks so much for sharing your stories. :)

Your welcome! Those are just the port I hadn’t been to before. I really had a chance to explore more while working on the cruise ship than I did working as an FA.

I can’t believe how much you’ve accomplished and got to experience, yyz. You go! That’s what life is all about.

I never really thought about the possibility of crew members seeking asylum. That is crazy.

Sorry for all the questions, but how much time did you have to explore when you docked, if you did have the opportunity? Like, did you have an afternoon to walk around and check out the city/country, have lunch, do some sight-seeing? My great uncle and aunt went on a lot of cruises with Princess and would always talk about how, as passengers, as long as they were back on the ship by X time, they did whatever they wanted once they docked. But to me, it always sounded like it was never enough time to truly enjoy a place, take in the culture, etc. Sounds like you would always be in a rush trying to take in as much sight-seeing as possible before moving on.

First to make it clear the people seeking asylum were doing so because they did not want to return to their home country not because the ship experience was so horrible;)

As for time at port, it depended on the destination. Mostly as crew, if you were exploring on your own had from about 9-9:30am to about 5 pm if the ship was departing at 6. so around 8 hrs if you had the day off. At some ports we had later departures ie 9-10 pm so you would have an extra 3 or 4 hours if you had the day off. Some smaller ports we only had half days and their were other ports such as Germany and port Said ( Egypt) where we had later dpartures because most of the passengers travelled to destinations some hours from the port ( Berlin and Cairo). Some destination we spent 2-3 days ( St.Petersburg, Stockholm, Bordeaux, Istanbul, Venice) Generally this was at a turn round or a highlight destination on the tour. Many ships do turn around at Barcelona and Rome as well.

There were some destination where the port is in a large industrial area or is in the middle of nowhere and in these destination you are better off going on a pax tour or ordering a cab. ie. Dublin, ( more because the dock area is kind of a maze to get out of) I lived there at one point so I just went to Howth and went hiking.
The port for Bruge ( there is a nice beach nearby, but it takes about half an hour to get out of the port area), Limmassol, Athens ( not really in an industrial area but you will half to take transport to get to anything you might be interested in seeing, there are some nice pubs, Stockholm ( where we docked was actually nice and there was a great seaman’s centre there but it takes a while to walk into town, you can rent bikes though), The port we stopped in for the Scottish Highlands, Waterford, etc. The port they stop in for Paris. You will probably get to revisit many of the ports so you can plan ahead for what you want to see and some sites do require reservations. Some places will allow you to travel for free on public transport if you show your ship id ( Amsterdam) Most places you had time to have lunch do some shopping and some site seeing even if you have to work for part of the day. When I was in Porto I only had a half day because of inventory but I still had time to get to the downtown core and visit the Cathedral and explore some picturesque neighbourhoods, befor grabbing a snack at a cafe and running back. Really had more opportunities to see things than when I was flying. In Venice ( I had been their at least 4 times before so I spent one of my three days in Padua). About half way through my time there a new crew member joined destinations who had been on ships for a while who knew great places to eat and he would take us to restaurants where they would cook us a menu all for ourselves. You probably wont see everything you want to see but at least you will get a chance to discover what you want to see more. A lot of people who make cruising their career have very international lifestyles. They often do not spend their time away from the ship in their country of nationality ie on my ship There was an American who lived in Amsterdam, A Swiss man who lived in Australia, a Brazilian who lived in Naples, and a Brit who spent his free time in Costa Rica.

Haha oh don’t worry, I totally got that the people seeking asylum are running from sociopolitical problems in their home countries. Getting hired with a cruise company is clever, but I can see why some cruise lines don’t want to get tangled up in that.

It definitely sounds like you have more than enough time to get a taste of a country/culture even when you’re a crew member. I’m fascinated by the people who end up living in other countries whilst continuing on with their cruise-line career. Talk about an international lifestyle, is right!

You’re making all this sound oh so tempting. :)

It really was a good experience, though at times exhausting ( mostly because I made the most of my free time to explore. If you have any more questions feel free to pm me.

Mmm, I’m going to have to try this one tomorrow. Today is all planned out!

I regret being the only one who didn’t get some of this. Next time. :)

I don’t really get cinnamon from this. So neat how we all taste it differently. :)

Strange! I wonder if I imagined it due to its association with similar flavour profiles! I’ll have to try it again to see!

Stacy said they have a gluten free version, it just isn’t on the site! So I’ll have to get some in a couple-ish months… when I need more caramel vanilla assam, and more licorice.

Ha! Yeah!

Yeah Stacy and I talked about gluten free when we were making it since I know there are folks out there with issues. I’m glad she kept that in the background so that you have a chance to try it :)

If I had known I would have ordered it already! :P

Do you have a recommendation for a good strawberry tea? I’ve been looking, and most of the ones I’ve tried have had other fruits in them or are green teas instead of black teas, and… IDK. I haven’t found a really good one yet.

Hmm. I’m actually not entirely sure I’ve had just a straight strawberry black – they often have chocolate or something. I liked the ones from DavidsTea well enough, and I’ve also enjoyed some from other companies, that contain papaya. And then there’s Ruby Pie, but again, not just strawberry.

Ruby Pie is on my to-buy list, now that I know there’s a gluten free version! :)

Uggh, I both love and hate when the tea is so good that it disappears and then you’re left tealess!

Haha I know! Being at school doesn’t really lend itself well to attempting to make my own tea. Buying it from someplace on campus is just a waste of money and I’m never quite happy with it. I’ll have to make up for it when I eventually make it home.

What if you brought your own tea bags (filled with loose leaf)? When I was a student I had a few places on campus where I could just get hot water and they didn’t mind.

I should do that :) There’s a Good Earth here and perhaps they’d give me some hot water. I’d probably be best bringing sturdy teas for that, but awesome idea.