Ideas for 2011 ... My Own QLC

If I'm on the Game of Life, QLC Edition game board, this week would have me stalled on the square "Denied work visa, reconsider life plan. Lose a turn."

Here's what happened.

Last week I applied to be a tour guide with some companies that do European tours. I was so excited; this was going to be perfect! The companies are based in the UK and told me I would have to get a work visa before they could hire me. No problem, I’ve gotten visas abroad before, how hard can it be? Plus it’s not like I have a criminal record or am a burden on the state – I am an upstanding US citizen with money in the bank. Cue the application process. All is going great, I’m typing in my travel experience, listing friends in the UK I’ll stay with upon arrival, providing references, etc when BAM – it asks for my points. Uh oh, what points? Cue me realizing I forgot an important step, making sure I had enough points to even apply for the work visa. Again I’m thinking, no problem, I’m young, I have an education, and friends to stay with so I won’t live on the streets of London. I’m going through the point assessment when I get to a part that asks how much money I have made in a consecutive 12 month period within the last 15 months. It’s all in British pounds so I go to www.xe.com, convert my salary, then type it into the assessment. I click “Calculate” and wait a few seconds. Then I read, “I’m sorry, you are not qualified to apply for this visa.”  

WHAT?! I am 24, have a college degree, speak fluent English and made a decent amount of money at my last job. So I look at all the details of point assessment and learn that my fate was decided because I didn’t make at least 50,000 pounds – or $80,000 last year.  I thought about that for a moment; I mean it seems a bit unrealistic to be the minimum I would need. If I had a PhD and studied in England for a few years the minimum would have been attainable with my last salary. Of course if I had my PhD and had studied in England for a few years I wouldn’t have had the job with that salary. Is this what they call a Catch 22? Besides, if in my current situation I was making $80,000 a year, I doubt I would leave that behind to pursue a temporary work visa abroad. It doesn’t really matter what I think though, because in the end I just am not qualified to apply for the visa. Snooty English! 

So I return to the drawing board, yes for the second time in one week, and consider the bare minimums for what I want out of 2011. I came up with:

• See My Husband before he deploys
• Live abroad
• Travel to new countries
• Become somewhat conversant in a new language (at this point, I’m leaning towards Italian)
• Find a job I enjoy that allows me to travel
• Keep up with my blog (aka don’t live in the jungle with no internet access)
• Learn to cook really well
• Visit my international friends
• Keep in touch with my American friends
• Make enough money to live happily and travel to see friends 

After consulting this list I made a new list of possible short-term life plans for 2011. Some can extend into full-blown life plans, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here it goes:

• Get TESL certification and teach English abroad…pretty much anywhere
• Work in Costa Rica for 6 months, learning Spanish, meeting new people, visiting friends and it would be close enough that American friends could easily visit!
• Work in Tokyo this summer
• Move to Thailand and find a job in Bangkok or Chiang Mai (this can be linked with teaching English if I want)
• Work on an international cruise ship
• Continue to look for international tour guide positions, but this time American companies!

As you can see, I am still working on big decisions before I can hammer out details. To those of you who keep telling me to get a real job, No! I don’t want one.  I am determined to find a way to work and travel and I know there are other people out there like me. I’ve even met people who are crazier than I am about this. I met one man in Chiang Mai who had been a professor in Australia before he went on holiday to northern Thailand. He loved it so much that he rented an apartment, found a teaching job at Chiang Mai University and never returned to Australia. He’s been in Chiang Mai now for 5 years. That could be me! Of course if I had my PhD and was teaching at an American University maybe I could also land that UK work visa and be a tour guide….