Former college major offers few career options

Li Guo is a 26-year-old postgraduate student at Beijing Language and Culture University majoring in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. She worked as a volunteer teacher at the University of Piura in Peru in 2013.

I had always wanted to work as a volunteer teacher overseas, but in 2013, there were only four countries from which I could choose to work , and none of them had English as their mother tongue.

I took eight hours of Spanish classes before heading to Peru, bearing in mind how to say "hello" and "thank you" in Spanish. During my first six months teaching at the University of Piura in northern Peru, I spent most of my evenings and weekends studying Spanish on my own with textbooks I had borrowed from local Chinese students. I gradually made friends with local students with the little Spanish I learned.