Matador Network's Blog, page 2149

Sail and kayak odyssey [vid]

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I love surfing. I love kayaking. And I love sailing. So, whenever the opportunity arises to combine the three — whether in my real-life adventures or vicariously through awesome videos like this — I can’t help but get all fired up.

This “project” (I guess that’s what we’re calling badass adventures now), called Sail 2 Surf, follows a group of paddlers as they cruise the gorgeous island chains of Washington, US and British Columbia, Canada in search of waves and adventure. Lucky bastards. Here’s the scoop:

In June 2014, a team of kayakers stepped aboard 34-foot trimaran, Lung-Ta, cast off from Orcas Island, WA and set off on the Sail 2 Surf project — a sailing and kayaking expedition with a focus on kayak surfing, adventure, and minimal-impact exploration.

If this doesn’t get you ready for spring paddling season (fast approaching), then I don’t know what will. Enjoy your daydream.

How to travel the world for life

BACK IN 2003, I left Ireland on this day with no return ticket, and 132 months / 574 weeks / over 4,000 days later, I’m still on the road with no home or place I can call a base. Everything I own in the world weighs 23kg/50lb and comes with me.

On my 8 year travel anniversary, I wrote my site’s most popular post ever by sharing the 29 most important life lessons I learned while travelling the world. And last year on my 10 year anniversary, I took those top-10 life lessons and presented them in a professionally-edited video to summarize my travels visually.

This year, I’m doing something different and sharing my most practical tips on how you can keep up long-term travel like I have, without winning the lottery (or having a mega savings). All throughout my travels — for over a decade — I’ve paid my way from money I earned while travelling.

SO, HOW DO I DO IT?

First, you don’t need to save up money for years before you can begin a life of travel. So many people make this mistake in mentality, and as a result they put off their travel goals for years unnecessarily. In fact, starting a travel lifestyle right now is well within the possibility of many people. I realize that there are exceptions, and some people might not want to travel long term like I do, so today I want to give you a heap of ideas for how to manage your own travel goals, whatever they may be.

I’ll tackle four key points:

1. How to lead a cheap travel lifestyle

2. How to score cheap flights

3. How to get the cheapest (and sometimes free) lodging

4. How to work while you travel

If you’re really serious about starting a travel lifestyle, I’ll also share the best links for further reading on travel hacking. To get you started, you can’t get better than checking out Nomadic Matt, since I learned a lot of the strategies I now use myself from his book How to travel the world on $50 a day.

HOW TO TRAVEL THE WORLD FOR CHEAP

Before we discuss how to travel cheaper, it’s very important to tackle how to live cheaper. This applies to you right now, even while you are settled.

If you have expensive habits now in your settled life, those habits will follow you into your travel lifestyle and rack up unnecessary expenses. It doesn’t need to be this way.

So how expensive is your current life? Before you start travelling, track your actual expenses now and see where they go. Do you eat out a lot? Spend a lot on fuel costs? Does most of your money go to car or home insurance payments?

The good news is that if you start travelling for the long-term, you can live cheaper in part because you’ll no longer need to spend hundreds of dollars of month to pay for your car, its insurance, its gas…and all the other major expenses that comes with leading a settled life. When you think about it, with all of these major expenses, leading a settled life is expensive!

But if you’re finding that the biggest sticker shock comes from your lifestyle habits, then you’ll have to make some tough choices.

Can you cut back on coffee, cigarettes, and beer in exchange for extra cash you can put towards train tickets to the distant corners of the world?

Not everyone can, or wants to. But if you can save just ten dollars a day by living a cheaper lifestyle…just 10 dollars a day!…that’s enough to pay the cost of your entire monthly rent for a hut on the beach in India or Thailand.

Think about that for a minute.

You might consider making other cheap lifestyle choices, like keeping a vegetarian diet and learning to cook from home. In a lot of countries, you can rely almost entirely on the use of public transport instead of a car, or get around on a bike. You can share accommodation costs by having roommates. You can choose to be happy with the current technology and clothes that you have instead of updating them every few months.

These changes can increase the amount of your expendable cash dramatically.

After you learn to decrease the cost of your life in general, this will absolutely spill over into savings for your travel life. Then, I recommend you:

Follow these 25 travel on the cheap tips from myself and Graham Hughes (who has visited every country on earth on a shoestring budget)

Get rid of all your stuff. Use sites like Ebay, Craigslist, Gumtree, go to second-hand shops, the options are endless. There is no physical item that you actually can’t live without unless it is the clothes on your back, food, or your means of earning money (for me, that’s my laptop). This will both give you a financial boost and allow you to travel with all your possessions and not need to pay for storage or rent back home.

Learn how to travel with everything you own carried along with you.

When eating in a country, don’t forget to try to get a place with a kitchen if you can (many youth hostels have one) and cook your meals. Otherwise, try to eat out at lunch time instead of dinner, since many places do lunch specials. Cities like Berlin and Paris have great “business lunch” options that offer several courses for just a few euro. Also, do indeed visit tourist sites, but leave the area when it’s time to eat, since you’ll be paying tourist rates. Find out in advance where the locals eat.

My number one biggest tip by far for how to travel for cheap is to learn the local language. This will save you heaps of money. I honestly feel this is one of the main reasons that I’ve been able to afford to travel so long – I’ve avoided paying the “English speaking tax,” and trust me, that tax exists pretty much everywhere that English is not the native language.

HOW TO FIND CHEAP AIRFARE

When your general lifestyle is less expensive, the next biggest expense people imagine is flights.

Flights, I’ll admit, can cost thousands of dollars. But if you know where to look, there are several ways to make these dramatically cheaper than you think. Here are some rules to live by when checking out flights.

1. Never go to the airline’s own website. Instead, use “meta-search engines” while check and compare the rates for multiple travel sites at once. Also, try to book tickets around 3 months in advance, and choose flexible criteria — especially for the exact day of travel. See what the cheapest day is during the week or month around when you can fly. You can save hundreds of dollars by flying even a single day earlier or later! And try multiple searches on several of the following websites until you get the best results:

www.skyscanner.com

www.momondo.com

www.kayak.com

www.expedia.com

www.adioso.com [This website uses natural language, so you can type “London to Southeast Asia mid May for 3 weeks” into the search box and Adioso suggests flights]
www.hipmunk.com [This site ranks flights by “Agony,” taking inconvenience into account]

2. For long-haul, cross continental flights, use flightfox.com. For $49 they can save hundreds or get you nice upgrades. Definitely worth it for many people. I got Lauren’s return flight (from US to Spain to live with me for 3 months, then from Ireland to US for Christmas) for $450/€330, because of some strange rule where we added an extra leg to Canada 2 days after she landed in DC that she didn’t even take. This website did the research for us in a way you wouldn’t get on the above meta-searches.

3. If your goal is to fly a lot, you can use round-the-world tickets, which can cost about €3,000+ depending on the number of continents you want to visit. You can book through airtreks.com or flightcentre.com, but it’s better if you can save miles through credit card sign-ups. This is more appropriate if you want to travel the world for a year and know where you want to go in advance. Using the above options and buying individual tickets still tends to work out cheaper most of the time though, and allows for more flexibility.

HOW TO FIND CHEAP OR FREE LODGING

For those of you travelling very fast and moving around once every few days, travel will be more expensive, but you can reduce costs by getting last-minute prices on hotels on sites like laterooms.com, lastminute.com, hoteltonight.com, priceline.com, hotwire.com (name your price — you won’t know where you’ll stay until you’ve paid).

I can understand why people think long term travel is not possible for them, when they think it’s a $1-200/night hotel stay, but the fact of the matter is that long term travellers do not tend to stay at hotels.

Instead, we:



Stay for free with Couchsurfing, servas (reference letter required, mostly US senior travellers), hospitality club, globalfreeloaders (I use Couchsurfing a lot for its search feature to find language learning partners too)

If you speak Esperanto, Pasportaservo.org is like the above sites with the only catch being that you communicate with your hosts in a language you can learn in a few weeks! (Here’s how well my girlfriend did with just an hour a day for 6 weeks)

Use wwoof.org (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms – about €20 per country membership – you work on a farm and get free accommodation, as well as the amazing experience)

House-sit at housecarers.com, mindmyhouse.com, caretaker.org — This is more suited to stays of a month or longer; you get free accommodation in exchange for keeping an eye on pets, gardens, and other chores.

Stay in youth hostels — as low as just $5/night in countries like Thailand, cheaper across Europe. Find your options on hostelworld.com or hostelbookers.com.

For stays of a few days or a few weeks, I highly recommend staying in a serviced apartment. For mid-range budgets this is my go-to choice. Find your home away from home on 9flats.com, airbnb.com, homeaway.com, roomorama.com, or wimdu.com.

Go camping! You are only paying for the space and can access water, electricity and other services as required in specialized campsites for a fraction of the cost of alternatives.

Here is more on how I find accommodation while travelling

HOW TO WORK WHILE TRAVELLING

Most people think they have to save their pennies for months or years in advance until they have “enough” money to travel and live off of for a while. Unfortunately, this can only last you so long (unless you have won the lottery, in which case send a donation my way!). The fact is that you can earn while on the road.

There are two ways to do this:

1) GET A JOB ON-LOCATION

If you are an EU citizen you can do this automatically in any other countries in the EU. In most other situations though, you need to obtain a visa in advance.

As an Irish citizen, I got a J1-visa to work in America twice when I was a student (this was part of the 6 months of travel I did before my 11-years-non-stop travel, so I am actually approaching 12 years depending on how you count it…) I applied for this through the Irish organization USIT. They also offer Irish people working visas in many other countries. Your country may have an equivalent service.

In most other situations, you may have to see in advance what your options may be. If you are a student, your university most likely offers study abroad options, and definitely use your network of friends and colleagues to see if any of your fellow students have experience working abroad.

If you are looking for a job on your own, it is actually usually much easier to get hired by a company before you travel, and then have that company arrange the visa. This was a possibility for me the first time I went to the US, because I worked as a summer school teacher for a university, which was experienced in hiring foreigners, so I actually didn’t need to arrange the working visa myself.

Finally, have a look at the country’s embassy website and see what they recommend for working visas.

WHAT WORK CAN YOU DO ON-LOCATION?

The easiest way by far that English speakers can work abroad is to do it as an English teacher. In countries were English teachers are in high demand, the school will arrange the visa and all logistics for you.

I’ve done lots of work as an ESL teacher myself, all based on an initial weekend affordable TEFL certificate I got from i-to-i, and then building upon my experience earned to get me higher paid jobs with time, eventually working for prominent schools like Berlitz and Wall Street Institute. I’ve also worked the following jobs on location, to give you an idea of your options (your options expand immensely if you learn the local language — don’t forget to sign-up to my newsletter for a week long crash course if you aren’t sure how):



Youth hostel receptionist

Store manager

Photographer

Basic office work

Engineer (what my undergraduate degree was in – in this case I worked as an intern)

Go Kart race controller

Computer repair / on-site tech support

Lots of English teaching

On-site translator

You may find other work depending on your work skills and the opportunities available.

2) GET A LOCATION-INDEPENDENT JOB

I worked on-location for my first years travel, but the catch was that my wages remained stagnant for all work other than teaching English, since I moved every few months and had to start over from scratch again.

That’s why the future of many jobs (not all of course) is that they can be based online, and you can take them with you around the world!

Here are a few ideas:

If you are good at languages, and willing to go through training for it, become a freelance location independent translator. I found my initial work on proz.com

Teach your native language online. You can become a teacher on italki for instance and take your students with you wherever you go. My girlfriend did this for her first months of travel with me, and was working full-time with the work she got.

Become an online coach – while I do this myself to help people expand the popularity of their websites and craft their language learning projects, there are many ways you can implement this. I once met someone who earned her living coaching people to give up smoking (her background was in psychology) over Skype!

Write an e-book or sell a course online. My site fi3m premium supports this completely free blog (no spammy irrelevant advertising anywhere here – that’s a really poor way to do anything but cover hosting costs) through a video course and resource database. I used to sell an e-book too. You can distribute this yourself if you put the time into creating a really high quality free site/Youtube channel/podcast or similar that sends traffic to it. You can also sell it directly on Amazon (self published) or through various other channels. Note that traditional publishing is not a good way to earn a living for most people – my book is an international best seller and this does not translate into money in my pocket because of traditional publishing logistics.

Take a skill that you have and see if it works online. Here is a list of 64 ideas to work online depending on the skill. You can also see if job openings are available through various online advertising boards, or a job outsourcing site like oDesk.

WHAT KIND OF WORKING VISA DO I NEED?

The question of how you manage the logistics of working online is tricky because there are no international laws that govern such things. What many of us do is simply set ourselves up legally and officially in our home country – so we have a bank, and pay taxes there.

Then we stay in a country on a tourist visa – a grey line depending on where you go. I actually have a business visa while I’m in America right now, since its immigration tends to be the most strict about what I can and can’t do here – this is despite the fact that I am not actually technically employed for any of my time here, but my book tour is business of sorts. In most countries though, a tourist visa is OK for online workers. (Disclaimer: Please don’t take what I’m saying here as legal advice – I accept no responsibility if you run into issues!)

You aren’t legally working in the eyes of many countries as you are not taking any money or employment from its citizens, only spending, as any tourist would. In case you are wondering, the “3 months” in my blog title comes from the 3 month visas I typically have as my limit in most places.

HOW DO I SET MYSELF UP AS A BUSINESS?

Whether you should operate as a freelancer or start your own business depends on too many factors for me to cover here, most important of which being the kind of work you’ll be doing, but you can contact a lawyer in your home country if you are unsure.

You can receive payments directly to your bank account (when I was a freelance translator, my clients were European and bank transfers within Europe are free – working with American clients is a pain in the ass to be honest because they are one of the few first world countries that still insist on printing your money on dead trees, i.e. snail-mailing checks/cheques).

Another solution is to set up a pro or business paypal account, but keep in mind that you do pay fees for many transactions and withdrawals.

WHEN EVERYTHING IS COMBINED — WORKING AND TRAVELLING LONG-TERM IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK

A really cool benefit of working location independently is that you can earn in a strong currency like the euro/dollar/pound and spend in a cheaper country where that money will take you really far. Leveraging currency differences is another thing that allows “technomads” to travel so extensively.

The combination of everything I’ve said in this post, namely

SPENDING less through a minimalistic lifestyle

Finding cheaper flights through a bit of research

Finding cheaper or free accommodation, especially through slower travel

Working online and earning in a stronger currency, while spending in a weaker one

Means that long-term travel is absolutely sustainable. I break some of these rules sometimes, like this year I’m travelling very fast on my book tour, and accommodation is much more expensive as a result, but flights are still cheap, we eat in as often as possible, we earn online, and we generally don’t spend much otherwise.

This kind of fast-travel wouldn’t be sustainable for me in the long-term, but we’ll be back to three month stays later this year, and back to saving plenty for intensive periods like this.

A good balance is the key, and this is precisely how I’ve been able to travel for 11 years straight. I hope that answers most of your questions, but if anything is missing, feel free to ask me in the comments below!

This article was originally published on Fluent in 3 Months and has been re-posted here with permission.

What your bartender wants to say

Photo: Cactus

Ah, the many thoughts running through a bartender’s head, most of which we reluctantly hold back in front of our guests…

1. What time do you get off?

“What time are you leaving?”
2. Can you start me a tab please?

“Is that a Titanium Black AMEX? Don’t be cheap.”

3. I’ll tip you next time.

“Too bad there won’t be a next time. I already know you aren’t coming back.”

4. It’s my BIRTHDAAAYY! I wanna free birthday shot.

“How about a barmat shot, that’s free.”

5. What do you like to make?

“Tips. All bartenders like to make tips. Now, what would you like to drink?”

6. Working in a club must me so much fun!

“Ya, cleaning up puke/broken glass while babysitting drunks is a blast.”

7. OMG, that bouncer is so rude. How dare he ask me to get off the bar?

“#1. You are a lawsuit waiting to happen. #2. Everyone can see your hello kitty underwear.”

8. When is the DJ going to play house?

“Looks like you’re SOL because this is a hip hop club.”

9. I just started dating this guy and he never answers my messages. I’ve left three voicemails, five snapchats, and seven DMs…

“OMG. Run buddy, run!”

10. I’m not that drunk.

“Dude, you’re cut off. You just chased your straw around the glass with your tongue.”

11. [Slurring] My drink is so weak.

“Just wait until I pour the next one.”

12. I lost my phone/purse/shoes/keys/wallet/scarf/umbrella/sunglasses…

“Come on! Keep track of your belongs. Drunk people love stealing anything and everything, including reserved signs to light-up ice buckets.”

13. Can I have a cranberry vodka?

“Sorry miss, we don’t carry cranberry flavoured vodka. Would you like to try a vodka cranberry? SMH.”

14. We need a picture.

“Maybe if I zoom in on their cleavage they’ll stop asking me.”

15. It’s my song!

“There’s no song playing…”

16. Do you know who I am?!

“Obviously I do not. You’re the guy asking me who you are.”

17. I don’t believe in tipping.

“I don’t believe in volunteering at a nightclub.”

18. Surprise me.

“Rocky Mountain Bear Fucker* it is. Maybe you’ll stop asking me to surprise you.”

*A Bear Fucker consists of equal parts Bacardi 151, Tequila, and Jack Daniel’s. Sounds tasty, right?!

How well do you know global booze?

Featured Photo by Mallix

Raising kids around the world

SOME global parenting styles might make American parents cringe, but others could definitely use a close study. Read on for a sampling of parenting lessons from around the world.

1. In Norway, kids nap outside even in sub-zero temperatures.

Photo: cglosli

In Norway, childhood is very institutionalized. When a kid turns 1 year old, he or she starts going to Barnehage (Norwegian for “children’s garden”), which is basically state-subsidized daycare. Parents pay a few hundred dollars a month and their kids are taken care of from 8 am to 5 pm. Toddlers spend a ton of time outside at Barnehage, even in extremely cold temperatures. It’s not uncommon to see kids bundled up outside during a Scandinavian winter, taking a nap in their strollers.

Even with the obvious benefits provided by the government in Norway, some parents complain about the lack of creativity in people’s approaches to parenting. One American mother adjusting to raising kids in Norway wrote, “There’s a sense that there’s just one right way to do things. And everyone does it that way. In America there are different parenting styles — co-sleeping, attachment parenting, etc. Here there is just one way, more or less: all kids go to bed at 7, all attend the same style of preschool, all wear boots, all eat the same lunch…that’s the Norwegian way.”

2. Vietnamese parents potty train their babies by 9 months.

Photo: ePi.Longo

Here’s a good one. In Vietnam, mom and dads teach their babies to pee at the sound of a whistle. Kind of like Pavlov with his salivating dogs. Except this is moms and dads with peeing babies. The Chinese do it too apparently. Parents start by noticing when their baby starts peeing and making a little whistle sound. Soon enough, the baby starts to associate the whistle with peeing and voila!

Think this sounds a little odd? Or a little like someone is conflating a kid with a pet Schnauzer? Well, researchers say Vietnamese babies are usually out of diapers by nine months. What do you think now?

3. Traditionally, Kisii people in Kenya avoid looking their babies in the eye.

Photo: love2dreamfish

Hat tip to Cracked for finding this one: Kisii, or Gussii, moms in Kenya carry their babies everywhere, but they don’t indulge a baby’s cooing. Rather when their babies start babbling, moms avert their eyes. It’s likely to sound harsh to a Western sensibility, but within the context of Kisii culture, it makes more sense. Eye contact is an act bestowed with a lot of power. It’s like saying, “you’re in charge,” which isn’t the message parents want to send their kids. Researchers say Kisii kids are less attention-seeking as a result, so that’s something.

4. Danish parents leave their kids on the curb while they go shopping.

Photo: Miss Copenhagen

In Denmark, writes Mei-Ling Hopgood in How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm, “children are frequently left outside to get frisk luft, or fresh air — something parents think is essential for health and hearty development — while caregivers dine and shop.”

As you might imagine, this idea sends shivers down the spines of many parents in the United States. In New York, a couple (one of whom was Danish) was arrested for leaving their child outside a BBQ restaurant while they went inside to eat. ”I was just in Denmark and that’s exactly what they do,” Mariom Adler, a New Yorker out walking with her 2 1/2-year-old son, told the New York Times. ”We would see babies all over unattended. We were stunned, frankly. But Denmark also struck us as exceptionally civilized.”

5. In the Polynesian Islands, children take care of children.

Photo: amhuxham

We’re not talking any old big brother babysitting little sister here. We’re talking organized kid collective.

Hopgood writes in her book that adults take the lead on caring for babies in Polynesia, but as soon as a child can walk, he or she is turned over to the care of other children. “Preschool-aged children learned to calm babies,” she wrote, “and toddlers became self-reliant because they were taught that that was the only way they could hang out with the big kids.”

Jane and James Ritchie, a husband and wife anthropology team, observed a similar phenomenon over decades in New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands. But they don’t think it would fly in the United States. “Indeed in Western societies, the degree of child caretaking that seems to apply in most of Polynesia would probably be regarded as child neglect and viewed with some horror,” they wrote in Growing Up in Polynesia.

6. Japanese parents let their kids go out by themselves.

Photo: W2 Beard & Shorty

Parents in Japan allow their kids a lot of independence after a certain age. It isn’t uncommon for 7-year-olds and even 4-year-olds to ride the subway by themselves.

Christine Gross-Loh, author of Parenting Without Borders, lives in Japan for part of each year, and when she’s there she lets her kids run errands without her, taking the subway and wandering around town as they may. But she wouldn’t dare do the same back in the United States. “If I let them out on their own like that in the US, I wouldn’t just get strange looks,” she told TED. “Somebody would call Child Protective Services.”

7. Spanish kids stay up la-ate!

Photo: Loli Jackson

Spanish families are focused on the social and interpersonal aspects of child development, according to Sara Harkness, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut.

The idea of a child going to bed at 6:30 pm is totally alien to Spanish parents, Harkness told TED. “They were horrified at the concept,” she said. “Their kids were going to bed at 10 pm.” so they could participate in family life in the evenings. The same is true in Argentina, according to Hopgood.

8. Aka pygmy fathers win the award.

For the Aka people in central Africa, the male and female roles are virtually interchangeable. While the women hunt, the men mind the children. And vice versa.

Therein lies the rub, according to Professor Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist. “There’s a level of flexibility that’s virtually unknown in our society,” Hewlett told The Guardian. “Aka fathers will slip into roles usually occupied by mothers without a second thought and without, more importantly, any loss of status — there’s no stigma involved in the different jobs.”

This flexibility, apparently, extends to men suckling their children. Ever wonder why men have nipples? That’s why.

9. French kids eat everything.

Photo: Wellington College

Set mealtimes; no snacking whatsoever; the expectation that if you try something enough times, you’ll like it. These are among the “food rules” in France that are taken as given. The result is French kids who eat what adults eat, from foie gras to stinky cheese. Tell that to my nephew.

By: Emily Lodish, GlobalPost

This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.

What teaching in Finland taught me

Photo: Lotus Carroll

THESE DAYS, people often ask if I’m experiencing culture shock. It’s a legitimate question. Just a few months ago, my family and I moved from Boston to Helsinki, Finland. To be honest, the culture shock isn’t so dramatic — especially since my wife is a Finn.

But I’m definitely experiencing classroom shock — a shifting of my pedagogical mindset — as I settle into my new job as a 5th grade teacher at a Finnish public school.

My family and I plan on living in Finland permanently, but I can’t help but think about what I’d do differently if I returned to an American classroom. Talk about reverse-classroom shock! I’ve already identified three big shifts I’d make right away.

Schedule more breaks

Finnish schools often schedule lessons into hour-long blocks: 45 minutes of instruction, 15 minutes of break. Students rarely have back-to-back lessons without breaks — and at the elementary level, it’s expected that children will spend their breaks playing outside, rain or shine.

During the first week of school, I didn’t get it. I designed back-to-back lessons so my students could have fewer but longer breaks. In the midst of a double lesson, one of my students confessed, “I think I’m going to explode. When are we going to get a break?”

This was a turning point for me. I shifted my approach, and began to notice that the students were more refreshed when they returned to the classroom after frequent but short breaks. The breaks helped children pace themselves.

Back in the States, I remember days when I pushed young students to produce work even when they were clearly dragging their feet. The idea of allowing a break away from the classroom didn’t cross my mind. Now I’m convinced that regular breaks help students to stay balanced and sharp throughout the day.

Back in an American classroom, I would plan brain and body breaks for my students as part of our classroom rhythm. If possible, I would find a way to get the children outside during these breaks.

Get refreshed

At first, I was reluctant to make my way to the teachers’ lounge during breaks. I saw these 15-minute chunks as “bonus prep time” and would stay inside my classroom, fretting about the next lesson. Totally normal behavior in an American school, right? But a few of my Finnish colleagues noticed this habit and worried that I might burn out. They challenged me to spend more time in the lounge, drinking coffee and catching up with colleagues. I took their advice and found that, lo and behold, breaks not only refreshed my students but also invigorated me.

Of course, most American teaching schedules don’t allow 15-minute breaks throughout the day. I’m not recommending that teachers demand these breaks from their administrators. I’m suggesting that they adopt a different mindset.

Finnish colleagues have taught me that breaks help me to be a more effective teacher. They’ve shown me that teaching is more like a marathon than a sprint. It’s important to slow down often so that one can successfully complete the race of each school year.

Back in an American classroom, I would set aside time to decompress every day. Rather than working through lunch or trying to be productive with every spare moment as I have in the past, I would put down the to-do list and focus on the simple task of getting refreshed. Perhaps I’d join colleagues for lunch? Maybe I’d eat alone in the classroom while listening to music? Or maybe I’d go for a walk, enjoying fresh air and sunlight?

In short, I’d take advantage of any opportunities I might have—however meager they might be—to refresh myself. Regularly pulling away from work has helped me to be a better teacher in Finland.

Give students more independence

In the past, my start-of-the-year philosophy as an elementary teacher has been this: take kids by the hand and don’t let them go until they show that they’re ready to be independent. I typically have begun each year by teaching students a long list of routines and procedures.

This year, things didn’t go as planned. For example, I intended to teach my Finnish 5th graders how to walk in a straight, quiet line. But what I learned during the first week of school is that my students have been moving independently from class to class since first grade. Furthermore, most children in my Finnish public school (grades 1-9) commute to school on their own. Teaching them how to walk in a straight, quiet line would have been unnecessary and even a bit insulting.

Although Finnish children appear to be much more independent than American children, they don’t have an “independence gene,” of course. But they do have (at school and at home) many opportunities to do things on their own without handholding.

My Finnish 5th graders wanted to arrange a school-wide bake sale this year as a fundraiser. Honestly, I wasn’t crazy about the idea at first. It sounded like another thing that I’d need to manage. I made a decision to release my grip on the bake sale and they blew me away! They designed advertisements, created a class sign-up sheet, and brought in heaps of baked goods. All of these things were done without my direction. I supervised, but I didn’t handhold.

If I ever returned to the States, I think I could provide my American students with more opportunities to work without scaffolds. Don’t get me wrong. Some students need structure — especially given America’s cultural differences — but they all could benefit from low-stakes chances to dive in.

Teaching in Finland has helped me to identify hidden American principles that have guided my thinking about teaching. For example, I used to think that students and teachers need to be productive at all times. (False. We can be more productive when we set aside time to recharge.)

We have a lot to learn when our long-held beliefs are confronted by different ones. Critically evaluating my teaching mindset and making changes has made me a stronger teacher.

This piece was originally posted on Education Week Teacher and Taught by Finland, and has been re-published here with permission.

You learned drink in Charleston, SC

Photo: Jon Fravel

1. You can open a beer bottle with an oyster shell.

2. You’ve run into Byron The Bum on your way to Burris Liquor store, and traded him a mini bottle for a neck massage.

3. When partying out of town, you’re disappointed when the bartender refuses to split one shot three ways.

4. Despite living in “The Holy City,” your Sunday mornings are spent getting wasted at Mad River.

5. You only know what month it is by the beer special at AC’s.

6. After one too many shots of Grandma at Big John’s Tavern, you’ve been issued a drunk-in-public ticket by a police officer on a horse.

7. You’ve gotten hammered while shucking oysters on a 300-year old plantation at the Lowcountry Oyster Festival.

8. You know someone who got a DUI on a bicycle.

9. You’ve smoked a cigarette inside The Griffon while being served a bourbon and coke out of a mini-bottle.

10. After several hours of boating, you’ve drunk enough liquid courage to climb the 30-ft. ladder and jump into the water from the Ben Sawyer Bridge.

11. You’ve popped bottles of champagne and watched fireworks on the WWII Battleship, USS Yorktown, on NYE.

12. You’ve grubbed down on Dave’s Seafood or Gilroys Pizza at 4am.

13. You’ve bought 40s with a fake ID at the T n L corner store on Spring Street.

14. You know that the best way to cut the salty taste of the ocean is Firefly Sweet Tea vodka, mixed with water and lemonade.

15. While drinking on Folly, you’ve had to return to Bert’s multiple times in one day for more beer.

16. You can ride out a wave, jump in a creek, or fall off a boat, without spilling your beer.

17. You know that the weekend starts on Thursday, with $1 beers at the River Dog’s game, before heading to James Island County Park to dance to live reggae music.

18. Despite having no memory of the previous night, judging by the sand in your bed, a palmetto rose on your dresser, and a serious case of “Charleston Black Foot,” you know that you must have gone barhopping downtown after leaving Folly.

19. You’ve gotten funny looks from Sunday morning churchgoers, as you rock the haggard stagger down King Street during your walk of shame.

20. While partyhopping, you’ve stopped at the fire station on Coming Street and slid down the pole.

21. You’ve partied in Gnarnia.

22. You’ve sipped on Bloody Marys while cruising along the Charleston Harbor with dozens of boats all decked out in Xmas decorations.

23. You know Labradors who are trained to open up a cooler, and retrieve beers.

24. After turning the wrong way down a one way street and nearly hitting a horse and carriage full of tourists, you realize that bar crawling on a bicycles is not such a good idea.

25. You’ve been to a bikini contest at the Wind Jammer in Isle of Palms.

26. You’ve watched world records being set while getting drunk at a Ski and Wakeboarding Competition at Trophy Lakes.

27. You’ve spotted Bill Murray across the bar, and possibly even taken a shot with him.

28. You’ve gotten so wasted at Shem Creek Bar and Grill after taking way too many oyster shooters from Big Al that you run aground as you try to boat away.

29. You carry a large purse with you when partying to hold keg cups for house parties, and a pair of sandals you can change into when you’re too drunk to walk in heels.

30. When partying out of town, you’re pleasantly surprised to learn that the liquor stores stay open past 7, and that you can buy liquor on Sundays.

31. You’ve swung into the Wando River on the secret rope swing right after slapping a bag of Franzia.

32. You’ve kicked it with Tin Tin, heard him rap, and paid him $5 to clean up your yard after a house party.

33. You’ve returned keg shells on a bicycle.

34. You know that the best happy hour is always on a boat.

35. Booty Shaking Competition. 4th of July.

36. You’ve buried kegs in the sand and gotten blackout-drunk at The Washout while doing keg stands in your bathing suit.

37. You own an absurd amount of costumes because you know that in Charleston, Halloween is “Hallo-week.” You’ve been to the epic Skin-ful Halloween parties.

38. You’ve been on several art walks, not because you like art, but for the free wine at each gallery.

39. You know that the best cure for a hangover is the beach.

Harrowing vid of Taiwan plane crash

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It’s never easy watching a plane go down. This is raw footage from a TransAsia Airways flight that crashed yesterday shortly after takeoff in Taipei, Taiwan. Here’s the latest from the BBC:

The plane, carrying 58 people, has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged in the Keelung River. Rescue efforts are ongoing. At least 15 people have been pulled out alive, with 20 still missing…

Emergency teams have cut the plane open to gain access, attempting to reach the remaining passengers trapped in the front section of the fuselage.

“At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei fire department official coordinating the rescue effort, told reporters.

The dead and missing passengers and their loved ones are in our thoughts today.

9 drunkest countries in the world

Photo: Mait Jüriado

Here are the nine drinkiest countries, by annual liters of alcohol consumption per capita.

9. Czech Republic, 13 liters per person per year

People in the Czech republic seem to exist in a sort of boozy middle ground — only 2.6 percent are alcohol dependent, but only 2.6 percent have never had a drink. They just drink steadily, and sometimes they drink a lot — 38.9 percent of the population had binged in the last 30 days, including more than half of men. This might be because the Czech Republic has some of the cheapest beer in the world — the equivalent of 70 cents for half a liter. (Not surprisingly, more than half the alcohol consumed in the Czech Republic comes in beer form.)

8. Slovakia, 13 liters per person per year

Slovakia is relatively tame as these things go — a full 16.3 percent of the population are lifelong teetotallers. Only 5.5 percent are alcohol-dependent, and 28.6 percent binge drink. Slovakia makes a lot of fruit liquors — pear, plum, apple, cherry, apricot — and maybe those just aren’t enough to tempt people to drink. Or rather, they’re not enough to tempt people to drink more than the top seven boozy nations.

7. Hungary, 13.3 liters per person per year

About a quarter of Hungarians had binged in the last 30 days, and 9.4 percent are alcohol dependent. And if you get tired of drinking, it’s also one of the cheapest countries to get MDMA!

6. Andorra, 13.8 liters per person per year

This Catalan principality is doing its co-prince, the president of France, proud — it outstripped both France and Spain, which Andorra also borders, despite both countries’ reputations for good-time booziness. The 42.1 grams of alcohol that Andorrans consume each day doesn’t even count drinking from the principality’s tourist industry.

5. Ukraine, 13.9 liters per person per year

It’s possible that after the year Ukraine has had, we’ll soon start to see numbers higher than 2.2 percent alcoholic and 22.6 percent binge drinkers. Either way, Ukraine is one of the cheapest places to get beer or wine — $4.50 for a bottle of mid-range wine, 67 cents for a half-liter of beer — but one of the most expensive countries to buy cocaine. So, keep drinking, I guess, guys.

4. Russian Federation, 15.1 liters per person per year

The Russian Federation is trying to get its drinking under control — a 2011 federal amendment restricted the availability and marketing of alcohol, strengthened penalties for providing alcohol to minors, cracked down on illegal alcohol production and trafficking, and established some consumer restrictions. They’re still plugging away at the booze, though — only 19.1 percent binge, but 9.3 percent are alcoholic, and drinkers put away 48.3 grams of pure alcohol per day.

3. Lithuania, 15.4 liters per person per year

A full 16.8 percent of Lithuanians are lifelong abstainers, but those who drink account for 51 grams of alcohol a day on average. The legal blood alcohol limit for driving is an unusually high 0.04 percent, which may be why nearly 50 percent of road accident deaths are due to booze. MDMA is way cheap there, too — $4.60 per tablet, versus $35 in the United States.

2. Moldova, 16.8 liters per person per year

Almost half of Moldovan men reported an episode of binge drinking in the previous 30 days — 32.2 percent of the population as a whole were bingers. All the high-alcohol-use countries are big into liquor, rather than wine and beer, but especially Moldova; 65 percent of the alcohol Moldovans drank took this form. Only 3.3 percent of the population is alcohol dependent, but that might depend how you define “alcohol dependent”; Moldova is also supposed to be the least happy country in the world, and residents may need their 55.1 grams of alcohol just to get through the day. Luckily, you can get mid-range wine for the equivalent of just $2.97, though it’s one of the most expensive places to buy cocaine.

1. Belarus, 17.5 liters per person per year

Imagine nine two-liter bottles of soda. Each person in Belarus drinks nearly that much pure alcohol every year — which is serious business, since even strong liquor is usually no more than 50 percent alcohol. Eleven percent of Belarusians, and almost 20 percent of the men there, have an alcohol dependency, and nearly 50 percent of men report binge drinking. And more than half of deaths from road accidents are attributable to alcohol.

By Jess Zimmerman, GlobalPost

This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.

UK habits I lost moving to Argentina

Photo: Santiago Sito

1. Beer drinking

Ah, glorious beer. That special, urine-colored sap that has put many a dent on a British liver, and many an affair in a British marriage. There are a number of reasons for our obsession with beer, but one is that it presents itself as a cheap way of getting loose on a Saturday night, in the face of many expensive alcoholic alternatives.

It’s true that I haven’t gone completely cold turkey on beer since arriving, but the wine here is just as cheap as the beer, and a million times better. Malbec is a revelation. Predominantly made in Argentina’s sun-drenched Mendoza region, the wine comes out singing of the sunny climate in which it was brewed. On the flip side of this, it’s tricky to get any decent beer in Argentina. The local Quilmes is far from the finished article and even the imported stuff tastes a bit different. And to stray you even further away from the beer that you once loved, there is our black, syrupy friend that keeps us warm in the dead of the night: Fernet.

2. Getting uptight about punctuality

Punctuality and efficiency are the keys to the whirlwind life of a Londoner. Whether it’s rushing to get to work on the tube, eating a quick lunch at Pret a Manger, or starting Friday night at 5pm, nobody wastes a moment in London. But this breeds impatience, which is something that you better leave behind if you want to keep your sanity in Argentina.

In Argentina, people like to run on their own clock, which is one that has usually been set a couple of hours late. Buses, for example, wind an extravagant web across each corner of every city, but never to a predictable or consistent schedule. Or sample the famous Argentine asado. On one hand, it is a dish of pure carnivore delight, but on the other a test of endurance and discipline, as you sit drooling for literally hours while the meat cooks at a tortoise-like pace. Even meeting friends for a drink can test the most sturdy of patience, as you will inevitably be required to navigate through the boredom of that first hour or two of obscurity between meeting time and the time when anyone else might actually arrive.

3. Acting like a cyborg in public

Some people would say that us Brits are polite, some would say that we’re cold and rude, I would say we’re a bit of them all, with a slice of confusion chucked in there as well. We tend to be brought up with an admiration for politeness and ‘proper’ conduct, whilst coming from a historical appreciation of a ‘stiff upper lip.’ This attitude has made us semi-robotic cyborgs out in public.

Happy to let it all hang-loose on any given street, the Argentines have no problem whatsoever in expressing themselves in public. They sing, they shout, they dance, and they argue in front of anyone and everyone, and they don’t give two shits who’s watching. This was tricky to understand when I first arrived, as I shied away from those spontaneous conversations that would spring up in the street.

4. Banking, legitimately

In Argentina, the economic situation is rather temperamental and has been ever since the crisis in 2001. This has, due to a variety of factors, resulted in two different currencies: the official currency and the ‘blue’ currency. The official rate, as peddled by the government, basically overvalues the Argentine Peso as the government refuses to accept the true rate of inflation in the country, while the blue rate tries to create a currency exchange rate that is more representative of the peso’s actual value. For example, today if you exchange US dollars on the official market you will get 8.6 pesos per dollar, but if you exchange them on the blue market you’ll get 13.5 per dollar.

The government has labeled the blue rate illegal — although the entire country uses it — so the banks use the official rate. Needless to say, I don’t fancy having 30% of my paycheck stolen by the government after it’s already been taxed, so I’ve left banks behind. Now, rather than the convenience of using one of the city’s many ATMs for cash, I have the pleasure of using one of city’s numerous, yet sometimes shady, intermediaries to serve up my dolar blue.

5. Watching TV

With little to do during cold British nights, you can often find solace in a mildly entertaining TV show. Usually lacking in the mental-exertion department, the shows require very few brain cells to enjoy, but they offer just about enough entertainment to deter you from pursuing any genuinely rewarding hobbies. In Argentina this is not a problem.

Television in Argentina seems to bounce between highly biased news coverage, incomprehensible entertainment shows with colorful flashing lights, 1990s movie repeats, and football from every corner of the globe — usually of a fairly low transmission quality. So TV gets scrapped, which is sensationally liberating — more time to pursue that hobby or drink your nights away. Malbec and fernet, remember?