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Gerry Abbey

Goodreads Author

Born

in Philadelphia, The United States

Website

http://gerryabbey.com/

Twitter

gerryabbey

Genre

Memoir, Travel, Nonfiction

Influences

Member Since

September 2010

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I grew up in Blue Bell, PA, attended St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia for high school, and continued on to Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT to pursue my English Education degree.

In the spring of 2004, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach English as a foreign language in Taiwan. During that year, I taught in a rural town on the east coast, about two and a half hours south of Taipei. After many months of attempting to acclimate to this place I’d known nothing about, I found that I had hundreds of pages of journals. With this base produced by conflicted alienation in the midst life-shaping adventure, I began writing my first book. Slowly, I outlined my story by selecting favorite and, even more so, least favorite experiences t I grew up in Blue Bell, PA, attended St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia for high school, and continued on to Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT to pursue my English Education degree.

In the spring of 2004, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach English as a foreign language in Taiwan. During that year, I taught in a rural town on the east coast, about two and a half hours south of Taipei. After many months of attempting to acclimate to this place I’d known nothing about, I found that I had hundreds of pages of journals. With this base produced by conflicted alienation in the midst life-shaping adventure, I began writing my first book. Slowly, I outlined my story by selecting favorite and, even more so, least favorite experiences to extrapolate a cohesive memoir about my life’s transition; little did I know at the time that this was a project that would span many, many years.

In the fall of 2005, I moved to Taipei and continued teaching for another year before returning home in the summer of 2006. Moving from Philadelphia to East Hampton, NY to Fort Lauderdale, FL, and back again to Philadelphia, I continued work on this project. In 2009, I moved from Philadelphia to Boston, MA for a job as a cost of living surveyor, which afforded me global travel for five to six months of the year.

Using the inspiration that came from this new profession, I scrapped my first draft and began again. Three years later, I completed a second draft of my memoir. In December of 2012, I found myself unable to edit the work down any further and, with four hundred and fifty-three pages, I sought out help.

Through a friend of my sister, I found a structural editor who guided me as we fine-tuned my book into a tight and gripping story that filled one hundred and sixty-one MS Word pages - a far cry from the endless manuscript I had created. By the fall of 2013, I finally saw an end to this eight-year process as I hired a copy editor and a graphic designer to complete the last edits and to beautify my formatting and cover for publishing.

Now, at long, long last, I present to the world a book that I put every ounce of my heart into while learning the arduous craft of writing: CHEERS, BEERS, AND EASTERN PROMISE: The trials and tribulations of a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan.
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Gerry Abbey’s books

Average rating: 4.14 · 22 ratings · 11 reviews · 2 distinct works

	Cheers, Beers, and Eastern Promise 4.10 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2013 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Witch Cat by Marcia Abbey, Gerry Abbey (Goodreads Author) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Gerry is Currently Reading

Gerry Abbey is currently reading

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)

by J.K. Rowling

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Jan 22, 2026 08:10AM

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The Goose Girl (The Books of Bayern, #1)

by Shannon Hale (Goodreads Author)

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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

by Thomas L. Friedman

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May 21, 2023 05:12PM

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Quotes by Gerry Abbey (?)

“I’d learned so much from traveling to familiar places that I figured I’d learn twice as much by going to a place I knew nothing about.”
― Gerry Abbey, Cheers, Beers, and Eastern Promise

tags: asia, inspirational, taiwan, travel, traveling-alone

5 likes

“It was one of those striking moments in life where you find familiarity in the inexplicable.”
― Gerry Abbey

tags: asia, drinking, memoir, taiwan, teachers, teaching, travel, travel-writing

2 likes

“And so we went. And so it went. And, slowly, I began to learn: speaking in the same language does not equal communication, especially when there is a cultural divide.”
― Gerry Abbey, Cheers, Beers, and Eastern Promise

tags: asia, chinese, english, language, memoir, southeast-asia, taiwan, teachers, teaching, travel, travel-writing

1 likes

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Gerry’s Quotes

“Logic is relative.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

99 likes

“I drink to make other people more interesting.”
― Hemingway, Ernest

tags: drinking

3217 likes

“I’d learned so much from traveling to familiar places that I figured I’d learn twice as much by going to a place I knew nothing about.”
― Gerry Abbey, Cheers, Beers, and Eastern Promise

tags: asia, inspirational, taiwan, travel, traveling-alone

5 likes

“There were signs everywhere but none that I could read or even hope to decipher. These multi-lined symbols unhinged my familiar world.”
― Gerry Abbey, Cheers, Beers, and Eastern Promise

tags: asia, inspirational, memoir, taiwan, travel, travel-writing

0 likes

“As the silence returned, I sat back and felt the tension ease away; I hadn’t even known I was tense. A few moments passed and once again the cycling fan laced in with the clanging chains and mixed with the rumbling mower and the buzzing insects.”
― Gerry Abbey, Cheers, Beers, and Eastern Promise

tags: asia, inspirational, memoir, taiwan, teachers, teaching, travel, travel-writing

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