It's worth it!

My time in Thailand has been amazing and should be on everyone's 'Must Do' list. The country itself is full of beautiful places and amazing people. It has been such a rewarding experience to have the opportunity to live here.
I am thankful for CIEE in helping with the process. CIEE does a great job of providing information before leaving your home country, providing visa assistance, and requiring the school to help with visa extension in a timely manner. While the pre-departure information was helpful, I think the most important thing for me was visa assistance. I am very grateful to CIEE for their help in this process and that alone would make me use them again in the future. I also appreciate that any time I have a question I feel that I can contact the coordinator and she will help me the best she can very quickly. She is very approachable, helpful, and resourceful. These things were very important to me in living abroad for the first time and have made my time in CIEE much smoother. On top of this, going through a program like CIEE, that recruits many teachers and includes an in-country orientation, guarantees that you will meet many other teachers. These teachers will become great resources and people to connect with about teaching and missing home, but may even become some of your best friends. I owe it to CIEE (and the in country program OEG) for all of the valuable relationships I have made on this journey.
If you are looking to live abroad and change the lives of young people while doing it, but aren't sure how. I can promise that CIEE will make the move as seamless as possible.
I also took my TEFL course through CIEE instead of another company and felt that CIEE did a good job with this course. Now that I have it, I am set for life and will always be able to use in future teach abroad endeavors. I believe that if you are interested in teaching as a career, or at least plan to teach abroad more than just one time, the TEFL training is definitely worthwhile.