Mike Dawson has visited thirty-six countries within five continents, and has lived in four different countries, all for work and school programs. Currently, he works for a non-profit organization, managing technology programs in developing countries. In another article, we'll dig into his current work, but for today, we are going to look at his earlier travel experiences through studying and teaching abroad.

Q: Mike, what do you love about travel so much? What led you to making travel a priority in your life?

A: From a young age, I was always fascinated by maps. I had a light-up globe at home that I loved, and I remember buying an atlas at my elementary school book fair. I was always interested in the idea of travel, but was never really able to act on it. Growing up in a pretty remote place in Idaho, my family didn’t get out much.

In college, I changed my political science major to international studies when I was feeling fed up with the current political climate. One of the requirements of my new degree was that I had to complete at least one semester abroad, which was just the extra push I needed to finally leave the country and see some of the world. I jumped right in and went to Spain. I really enjoyed it! I was able to travel around within Spain during weekends and holidays, and at the end of my exchange, I bought a month-long Eurail pass so I could travel through Europe. It was really valuable for me to be able to travel and to experience these different cultures first hand. From that point on, I was hooked and started trying to figure out how to travel more and work abroad.

Q: Let's talk more about the exchange. What kind of program did you sign up for?

A: There were a few different options. There are the major study abroad programs like ISA which are generally more expensive. These tend to be “island programs” because they put you in housing with other Americans and you go to your own classes separate from the other students in the university. You would take some language classes along with it, but it’s kind of a study abroad lite version.

On the other extreme, my undergraduate school, University of Idaho has relationships with other universities where you can do a direct exchange. This way, you just pay tuition to your own university, but you attend classes elsewhere. Tuition at the U of I at that time was laughably cheap, like $1500, so that’s all I paid to enroll at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. My wife, Lindsay and I both signed up for the semester. With a direct exchange, you don’t have much institutional support, so we had to find an apartment and were basically on our own. Most of the classes were in Spanish, but there were a few classes in English that we ended up taking, like film. I definitely recommend that if you are interested in a direct exchange, that you have at least two or three years of the language. If you are limited in the language, maybe more of a hybrid program would be better for you, so that you aren’t taking all of your classes in a language you don’t understand. I had taken Spanish for four years in high school and all throughout college as well, so I had a pretty good foundation, but it was still tough to get acclimated and to take good notes in class. But what's funny is that when I got back to America and was taking an advanced economics class, I had to relearn much of the terminology in English, because I only knew it in Spanish! But ultimately, I would say that a full immersion program would be the most valuable route for anyone strong enough in the language. It was a life changing experience for me.

Q: Were you responsible for all other living costs besides the tuition?

A: Yes. We had to cover the cost of the plane ticket, rent, and books. We put all of our stuff in storage at my parents house and just paid rent in Zaragoza instead of back home. One downside is that we weren’t allowed to work, so I had to be dependent on my parents and financial aid during the exchange.

It was an interesting time to be there in 2004 because we were right on the cusp of technology. It was before wireless internet and digital cameras and ipods became a big thing. We didn’t have laptops or anything, so we would have to go to internet cafes for our primary source of entertainment, besides watching Spanish TV. It was this weird time where the internet was there, but it wasn’t as ubiquitous yet and you had to go out of your way to use it. Traveling now is so different. You can just have maps on your phone and don’t have to travel with a physical guide book. Taking pictures on my phone now is so much easier than lugging around my big camera and getting film developed.

Q: After your semester in Spain, what did you do?

A: When we got back from our month-long trip through Europe, I still had another year of college classes to take, and Lindsay still had another year after me with her triple major. Until she finished, I was stuck working the swing shift on an assembly line. But before I even went to Spain, I had heard that I could teach English in Japan through the JET program, and I knew that I wanted to do that after college. So, as soon as Lindsay finished, we applied in Seattle and interviewed in Spokane. The interview was really bad and hostile! I’ve read that sometimes these programs try to throw you off of your game and see how you handle yourself under pressure or in awkward situations. So... we failed at that...

We moved to Portland, and the next year we reapplied at the Portland consulate. They were much friendlier in that interview and we both got in! We left for Japan the summer of 2007.

Q: Did you need any special certification to teach English abroad?

A: No. For the JET program and most other private conversation schools, all you need is a bachelors degree in anything. There are people in the program who are engineers or have biology degrees or whatever. You just have to be able to be friendly, outgoing, energetic, and passable at English. In fact, I worked with some people who weren’t even great spellers or particularly strong in their grammar. The program's goal is to make English fun and exciting for the students. Our job was to go in as assistant teachers and shake things up a bit to make learning more fun and authentic through native pronunciation, fun games, and activities. If you learn a language by speaking to a native speaker,  you are going to be more confident and fluent in your speech, and that is was the JET program is all about.

If you do have ESL certification and high levels of experience as a teacher, then you can go on to teach at the university level, and I think those jobs pay quite well. But as a sort of entry level, the JET program actually still pays pretty well, especially compared to other countries or even compared to other teaching jobs in Japan.

We were working for the Japanese government and placed in public schools. If you are married, they will place you together, so we got placed in a town called Hirosaki, in northern Japan. I was placed at an academic high school and Lindsay was placed at a state level office and travelled around to different small town schools in the area. When she was at elementary schools, she would be playing “Simon Says”, “Hokey Pokey”, and “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”.

My experience at a high school level was much different. In Japan, public school is only compulsory to the junior high level, and then students apply to focussed high schools. So you have the academic high schools, tech schools, and agricultural or business high schools. I was at the number two academic high school in my town, so my students were mostly high level English speakers. We would do more advanced activities like writing prompts. I also visited other schools sometimes. I visited a deaf school a few times a year and a boarding school for mentally handicapped students, as well as many other high schools. I saw a pretty wide variety of classes, so I was able to see the schooling system and meet some people that I wouldn’t have been able to meet otherwise.

Q: Did the JET program help you get your work visa and find housing?

A: Since it’s through the consulate, they do all of your visa paperwork for you. The program pays for your flight over and your flight home once you are finished. You don’t have any say in where they place you. The vast majority of placements are in rural areas because larger cities like Tokyo and Kyoto have enough native English speakers. We were in a city with a population of about 170,000, but there were other people from our program in tiny towns where they were the only foreigners in the town.

Teachers are considered public servants in Japan and have to change schools every few years. There is teacher housing set up, and they cycle teachers around to different cities without giving them any choice as to where or when. They put us in a two bedroom apartment that was heavily subsidized, so we paid under $200 a month. We were also living income tax free on the Japan side and the American side. Our low expenses and dual income provided us with the money needed to take trips outside of Japan.

Q: Did you also have enough vacation time to travel?

A: Although Japan's school calendar is year-round, we were given twenty vacation days per year. Also, school would always be closed three days before and three days after New Years, their main holiday. There is also a string of holidays in the spring called Golden Week. We paired our vacation days with holidays and weekends, and we were able to take advantage of our close proximity to other countries to travel quite a bit.

Q: Which specific countries did you visit?

A: For our first winter break, we headed to Thailand, Cambodia, and just popped over the border of Myanmar for an afternoon. We went to South Korea for a week in the summer. The next winter, we went to Hong Kong for four days and to India for a little over two weeks. In India we did an overnight camel ride and also had to jump onto a moving train at one point. Then, during Golden Week, we visited Australia and New Zealand.

At the end of our contract, JET paid for our flight home. But since we were already on the other side of the world, we decided to take the long way home through Asia and Europe. We booked a flight to China on Iran Air, which was the cheapest flight we could find. Then we took a train from Beijing to Mongolia and then went up into Siberia. Here, we came into town with no reservations and everything was completely booked! Luckily, a sympathetic woman at a hostel reached out to her connections and through friends of friends, we ended up finding a Russian family who let us sleep in their living room for the night. Next, we had to fly to Moscow, our one section of the trip not traveled by land. From there, we took a train to St. Petersburg, took a bus to Estonia, ferried to Finland, and then also stopped over in Iceland during our flight home to the States. We did this all in about 3 weeks.

Q: Of these countries you visited, which were you mostly pleasantly surprised with?

A: Mongolia is one of the coolest places I've been to. If you think Idaho is remote, go to Mongolia. There is probably no road where you need to go, and if there is, it’s just a thin layer of asphalt with nothing else around, not even power lines. It’s amazing, and I wish we had more time there. We were only in Mongolia for about four days and visited a beautiful national park that was just a few miles from the capital. If we had stayed longer, we could have done a lot more like go on a two hump camel safari or go falconing. I did, however, get to hold a Giant Golden Eagle. It was a total tourist thing on the side of the road, but it was pretty majestic to be that close to such a large bird. The eagle came close to having a wingspan as big as mine.

Q: You always have such great travel photos! Is photography a passion for you?

A: Thanks! I'm not a trained photographer and I feel like everyone with a cameraphone thinks they're a photographer these days, but I enjoy trying to get interesting or funny pictures.

I try to seek out quirky and unique things to see or do while traveling. If you go to Moscow, Russia, you obviously have to see St. Basil's Cathedral and Red Square, but make time to go check out the more obscure Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines, too. I'll go hours out of my way to see unique things that you can't find anywhere else, like the rat temple in India, a parasite museum in Japan, or the sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica. Lots of these seem to be animal-related...

If you want to see more of Mike's travel photos, check out his Instagram!

I hope that this interview has inspired you to consider more options for making travel a larger part of your life, too. I definitely want to try teaching abroad!

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