IF you are a linguist by profession, it will really be a very exciting life for you especially if you start traveling at the age of 20 right after graduation. If you come from Spain, the most logical language to learn next and to teach eventually is English. There are many British expatriates and tourists in Spain and it helps a lot if residents here know better English. That’s good for tourism you know. And oh, not just for tourism but for the housing industry as well. British tourists who come here have eventually settled down, taking with them Spanish-speaking wives.

After you have fulfilled all the requirements to become an English teacher abroad, you can go to Thailand. They are in need of English teachers there again for their tourism and hospitality industry. They want their tourism workers such as the ones working in beach resorts and casinos to hone their English-speaking skills. These specialized courses in English usually last up to six months and teachers there are paid monthly. These English tutors receive as much as $4,000.

And not only will you enjoy being an English teacher there, you will also enjoy the sights. Go to Phuket and literally take your breath away as the beaches there are awesome. In fact, it was both the setting and the set of the Leonardo diCaprio movie The Beach. On weeknights, have fun at the beach as you will literally see glowing planktons all around you. Once in a while, there are Hollywood productions coming in such as Stealth and sidelining as an English dialogue coach will do just fine for you.

If your stint in Thailand has come to an end, you can go to China and have fun teaching English there. Just like the Thai, the Chinese are in a dire need for English teachers not because they are not that competitive of the language but because they are so many. After all, China is the most populous nation in the world and children there need to be pampered with English education everyday.

Once your stint in China has ended, you may want to become a Hollywood dialogue coach again. Producers will be very impressive to hire you once it is listed in your resume that you have been a Hollywood English dialogue coach once upon a time. You may go to the Philippines in Cebu in particular where a movie is shot. This movie is called Deep Gold, produced by Bigfoot Entertainment and starring Bebe Pham, a Cambodian. It’s not that hard to teach Cambodians like Pham if they are very determined to covet a particular major Hollywood role.

Or you can go to Japan, a favorite setting of Hollywood movies in English such as Memoirs of a Geisha, Lost in Translation and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Other Hollywood productions which are in need of native cast speaking English are usually staged in Morocco. Once you’ve saved a considerable amount of money with those Hollywood stints, you may go back teaching English.

IT’S nice to know if you are the son or daughter of a diplomat. You will surely have the opportunity to learn many languages. When I was still in first grade, my parent was assigned as the ambassador of Spain to Tokyo. It was in Japan that I attended an international school. But international schools there follow the norms of the regular schools. They have uniforms for students which I found weird because I was forced to don on micro mini skirts like they do in schools run by nuns in the United States.

It was really an awkward experience but my classmates made me feel comfortable as they come from various places and just like me, they are also children of ambassadors. Thus, I was sort of in a cocoon in Tokyo buffered by the many foreign friends surrounding me. In Tokyo, I was able to befriend Filipinos, Chinese and Americans and my English skills are honed. In fact, I admit that I have not even learned any single dialect in Spain such as Catalan and Basque but I have already learned quite a number of Niponggo and English words during my entire six years here.

In high school, my father was assigned in the Philippines and they opt not to take me to an international school anymore. Instead, they want me to experience the hard knock life and I was forced to mingle myself with Filipinos in an all-girls high school, the Maryknoll College. At Maryknoll, I was able to befriend lots of Filipinas who were enchanted with my brunette yet exotic Spanish beauty. They patiently taught me Tagalog which is the national language over there. They also taught me a few regional dialects such as Cebuano and Maranao, two of the dialects that my classmates speak as a native tongue. I also learned to be religiously sensitive as one of my chums was a Muslim. And she is a very friendly person.

It was in learning these different cultures that I have learned a lot of things about life. And it did not end in high school. I am grateful forever to the Almighty for sharing to me the beauty of His creation and its diversities. In college, I was made to go to Quebec where my father was assigned there as a consul. In Quebec, I took up the degree in international relations but I must first pass two electives – English and French. Quebec is the part of Canada where French is spoken. Thus, I was able to even tour France in one summer as part of my internship.

In France, I stayed in Paris and my French speaking skills were even honed there thanks to a very gracious friend who has assisted me. Marie was also very forthcoming and it was there and then that I had decided that French were really not just intellectual people but very accommodating as well. I also tried French food which was equally yummy as the dishes that I had tried in the Philippines such as fish paste, chicken fetuses, roasted whole pork, rice cakes and everything else in between.

HAPPINESS begets fulfillment. And fulfillment begets wealth. That does how it is in a dog eat dog world of employment and business. Whether you are running your own business or you’re employed by a company, you need to be competitive to survive. Acquiring a second language is surely one of them. This is especially true if you are sent to a foreign country where the main language is not English. You need to know the local culture and the local language so there will be easiness in handling peers and subordinates.

Take a promotion to another country as something positive even though it entails hard work on your part first. For example, if you are sent to Spain, you need to study in a language school in that country. That’s actually a lot of choices. Either you go to mainland Spain in such cities as Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia or you are sent off to the exotic islands of Tenerife and Ibiza.

Taking on a language course may be dealt with anytime of the year but now that the holiday season is fast approaching, it’s all the more thrilling. What’s even more fun is you enroll your spouse or your romantic other at any language school you like so you can study together amidst the snowy skies and the lights on Christmas time.

One of the best languages to study is Spanish. It’s got a variety of dialects so you may as well want to learn all of them – dialects such as Basque or Catalan. Portuguese is another language that is popular in the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the Mediterranean areas.

A typical six-month language program is the very basic one. When the student graduates from the program, he or she is expected to grasp the language and at least understand it in its most instinctive forms. After that, the student can move on to another six-month course – the intermediate part of the program. In the intermediate part of the program, students get to have lengthy essays and recite in class impromptu. For the advanced part of the program, the student is expected to be adept in the language and to know every nook of it.

Learning a foreign language is very important because you can impart what you have learned back home. What’s more, you’ll get paid for it too. Take for example if you are living in Sunnyvale and you know how to speak Mandarin. You may be hired by a call center which specializes in Mandarin speaking customers. There is definitely a premium for your pay.

Another advantage in learning the language in Europe is that you can breeze through one country after the other. Europe is an open continent as far as fellow Europeans are concerned thanks to the Schengen agreement and a relaxed policy by the European Union. That means that if a Spaniard wants to go to Germany and France; and he knows the languages of both countries, it will surely be an exhilarating experience.