Julenna Newbanks
Recruiting Coordinator
Julenna traveling in Taiwan
“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” - Cesare Pavese
I am a 24 year old from Eastern Ohio, USA, and I graduated from the University of Indianapolis in May of 2007. I have been traveling abroad for ten years now yet every time I board the plane for a new place I panic inside and ask myself what on earth has possessed me to leave all of the comforts and pleasures of home!?!?!? I have realized that it is the challenge of living abroad that I love so much. It’s the challenge of not being able to understand the menus at a restaurant but still being able to get food some how. You never realize the universal body language that humans possess until you have been abroad where you don’t speak the language. It’s amazing how well you can communicate with people by using simple gestures and it’s how I survive daily life in Taiwan.
Julenna Newbanks
When I decided to go for my TEFL certificate I had no idea where I wanted to teach English. I had lived in Peru for a few months every summer in high school and had spent a semester abroad in South Africa but couldn’t find a job I wanted in South America or Africa. One day I was speaking with a friend from college who is Taiwanese and she was begging me to come visit. I found the Reach To Teach site randomly while searching for jobs in the ESL field and decided to apply. The people at Reach To Teach were very informative and answered any and every crazy question I could think of. If you had told me six months prior to landing in Taiwan that I would be coming I would have told you that you were crazy! Life definitely has a funny way of surprising us I guess!
Being a teacher was never really in the cards for me, or so I thought, before I studied abroad in South Africa. In college I studied International Relations and was hoping to become a diplomat or government worker after I graduated. While in South Africa I volunteered to be a teaching assistant in a small township near the university and I fell in love with my students there. Every single day I walk out of the classroom with pains in my sides from laughing so much. I used to think I would never have the patience to work with kids every day let alone teach them something but teaching has been such a rewarding and enjoyable experience. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
Julenna enjoys spending time with her favorite students
Taiwan has a lot to offer as far as beautiful beaches, elaborately decorated temples, great hiking, good food etc but I think one of Taiwan’s greatest treasures are the Taiwanese people. I have been living in the Mid-Western states of the USA for a while and have gotten used to the friendly culture that inhabits the region and was shocked to find Taiwanese people to be even friendlier then those in the Mid-West. I have never lived in a place where I feel so safe and have strangers around me who would help me out in any way possible if I ever needed it.
Overall the experiences and memories I will walk away with from living and teaching here in Taiwan will be some of the best in my life and something I will never forget.
Julenna Newbanks
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