Archive for March, 2011
Travel Insurance for Working Abroad
When you are working abroad, whether as a missionary, a nanny, or a student, you should check on travel insurance. Standard travel insurance covers any emergency medical expenses, personal accident, personal liability including a rented accommodation, theft, or damage to your bags. Due to the specifics of working outside of your home country with the duration of your stay over 6 months and where the possibility of acquiring the assistance from locals is limited you should rethink your travel insurance needs.
Some of the most popular programs that would require you to travel overseas are the Peace Corps, doing missionary work, working as an Au pair for a family that is either visiting or living aboard, and a student exchange. The Peace Corps and missionary work is similar with the main difference being that missionary work can come from many churches. Both require you to work with underprivileged people, some in the third-world countries. Working as an Au pair is a fancy name for a nanny. Working at this job, you will be responsible for taking care of the children, making sure that they eat on time, take a bath, and go to bed on time. They are also responsible in making sure that the children are entertained when not in school. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Stretch Zone
Last week a friend of mine had a going away party. He had decided to leave his life as a banker; nice house, loyal pet, and great car included, to join the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. It wasn’t a spontaneous decision; he’d applied to the Peace Corps months ago and had just now been accepted. He’d accomplished what many people want: a comfortable, secure, stable lifestyle, and he was leaving it behind. People at the party talked about him with both admiration and suspicion: “how brave, how noble. Is he crazy?”
My friend’s choice to leave comfort behind and venture into a challenge is not uncommon. Outward Bound has over 500,000 alumni – people who intentionally chose to leave their cars, phones, and beds for a tent floor. We all know that there is benefit to discomfort, right? Otherwise why put one foot in front of the next when it’s pouring rain and you have three blisters, or keep climbing up when the view turns your stomach? So is stretching out of our comfort zone worth doing in daily life? It is! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: peace corpRelated posts
The JFK Mystique
“Ask not,” said John F. Kennedy at his inauguration as President, “what your country can do for you – but what you can do for your country…,” the timely and powerful suggestion heard around the world and often repeated yet today.
I was a young Air Force officer in Wichita Falls, Texas, the day President Kennedy was inaugurated. Age 31, wife and three kids, I was both enlightened and thrilled – impressed that such a young man could have risen so far in a supposedly old man’s beltway bailiwick. Kennedy had also purveyed to me the promise of a nation bent on not only progressing as a nation but so as to be able to help others – as in the creation of the Peace Corps, a volunteer group of dedicated and well-meaning young Americans which won for the U.S. new friends all around the world. For us in the military, he promoted the GI bill which not only allowed many of us to go on to college but in so doing paving the way and creating the incentive for thousands of other young Americans to do the same. Science, progress and improved human relations seemed the new goals for the country and education was the answer…and properly so.
JFK always spoke to the nation’s future – expressing his hopes and goals with a gentle sense of humor that refreshingly penetrated and rose above the usual diatribe of the two ever-contentious political parties less intent on the nation’s welfare and future than in destroying each other. Such a pity for this nation – and perhaps the world – that this part of the Kennedy legacy has not endured. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: peace corp