Where in the world is Carmen...I mean Eric

So, it's that time again.  No, not the time for the "Wheel of Morality, turn, turn, turn".  Nor is it time to turn the page because the chime rang "like this".  No, no.  It's time to figure out what to do with our lives.

There are a number of things that make this tricky for us.  #1 is that no woman wants a dead-beat husband.  That's the biggest blow for me.  While in most scenarios Trish can come up with a much higher salary than I can, it somehow just won't work out for me to watch TV professionally.  #2 seems to be that our expertises take us to slightly different areas.

We've put in quite a few applications to various things.  Not that I'm wishy-washy and can't make up my mind what to do with my life.  Mostly.  Really, it's just that there are sooooo many neat things to do in life.  I don't just want to dabble in a bunch of them and never be expert at any.  It's that I want to be an expert in a bunch of them.

Worse yet, the traveling I did with the military and elsewhere left an insatiable desire to keep seeing more of the world.  Allow me to explain just a little:

Vienna, Austria

Iraqi friend I met in Jerash, Jordan

Wadi Mujib, Jordan.  Best water slide in the world

15 minute swim from my barracks, Okinawa

Indian music shop, Singapore

Singapore

small military outpost in Thailand

South China Sea

البدرة, العراق--albadra, Iraq

near Cataract Canyon, Moab, Utah

For every crummy memory I have of a place, I think I have at least a half dozen good ones.  I can't decide on a single factor that makes it all so enjoyable: the people I'm with, the people I meet, what I'm doing, the excitement of a new place, learning a new language...you name it.

I'm applying for PhD programs in second language acquisition and teaching.  I LOVE learning foreign languages and I LOVE seeing other people catch on too.  Few things excite me more than seeing somebody's light bulb light up and few things depress me more than seeing someone get bogged down by a language and not like it anymore, because the first scenario is so definitely attainable in any language by anyone anywhere.  Trisha just discovered this post:  http://zenhabits.net/fluent/  by a guy who writes this blog:  http://www.fluentin3months.com/  It's a guy who goes around learning new languages for a few months at a time.  He says he sucked in school but now he's trying his own approach, following his own intuition.  Honestly, as a language teacher, language learner and language lover...the whole point of the classroom is to get students to the point that he's at...loving the language enough to start making discoveries on his on.  I think it's neat he can do that without school.  I think it's faster with some schooling.  But the way language teaching is often approached I really don't blame him for going it on his own.

But there's the next stumper.  Why can't I get paid to just learn languages?  We're looking into a job to teach English in China.  I've never studied Chinese, but after French, Chinese has held more fascination for me than any other language.  Working in Moab taught me that the "right" answer is not always the "best" answer.  Instead of pumping up my resume just a bit more and spending a summer doing schooly stuff, following my heart taught me a whole new dimension to life: doing something because you love it.  It makes work not be work anymore.  It makes success not just a check mark or a line of text.  It makes it a smile, or a friend, or a memory that lasts a lot longer than what we often define as "success".

Shoot, if we can teach English in China, why not do it in France?  Or anywhere in Europe?  Trisha's not nuts about the Middle East.  I'm okay with that since she's okay with East Asia and Europe.  And why just teach English?  Why not get real jobs over there?  On the one hand, it would be nice to keep messing around, visiting new places and enjoying just living!  On the other is "thing #1" from above.  Having health insurance, retirement and a roof to come back to are things I've come to value immensely.

So...
1) PhD in SLA, AL, or Ling
2) Teaching English in:
     a) China
     b) France
     c) Somewhere else
3) Lecture at a community college in:
     a) Arabic
     b) French
     c) Linguistics
4) Figure out how to translate and work from home
5) ?

So what's the right answer?