Many people say and think, "Wow, you lived in China!" Yes, it was a great experience. But, I try to convey to people is that it is not difficult to travel to China, nor is it difficult to live and work there. In just Shanghai alone, there are over 2 million foreigners (from all corners of the globe) living and working. In the grand scheme of things, they look at me and say, "Oh, he's just one of those guys who came here to teach English, have fun for a year, and then go back and be a normal American."
I had always been interested in visiting a foreign country. One chance to visit Egypt escaped me during college. Apparently, it wasn't good for a prospective RA to miss cross-cultural training to attend a 2 week trip to Egypt. (Of course we tried to fight that, to no avail...) I made the decision to move to China for a job after graduation because:
I thought it would be cool to go and live somewhere that no one I knew had ever been to;
I knew that the experience of living and working internationally would help me in my ultimate goal of making a career thru international business;
I thought learning Chinese would be a smart decision.
