Harvard Student Studing In Ba Looking For Work

[Hybrid Ambassador]

Hybrid, I always enjoy reading your posts and find your English usage very charming. I also have a sneaking suspicion that you are a native English speaker having fun with us, using Peter Lorre's speech pattern as your model.... In any case, language is about communicating, something that you do very well. So there's no need to be apologetic about prepositions --

Bwa,ha,haa ! LoL, what an undeserving accolade towards this Japonaise Anciano ! If I could be a native English speaker, who needs
Ceviche's most eloquent English exp<b></b>ressions to mimic from...Now if you were talking of: ElQueso, steveinbsas,genre etc, as the predominant master of uni~ er, English language native persons, then I understand but me?

 

[Ceviche]

Bwa,ha,haa ! LoL, what an undeserving accolade towards this Japonaise Anciano ! If I could be a native English speaker, who needs
Ceviche's most eloquent English exp<b></b>ressions to mimic from.

Do you know my nationality, Hybrid? And do you know nationality of El Queso ? How are you so sure, who is from where?
Now a self proclaimed japanese will decide, who is from where, basis the person's English writing skills here?

 

[mmoon]

Unfortunately, it seems that most expats when they move to BA still have a fantasy of teaching English and being able to live a good life here. Personally, I think those days are over. There are a ton of native English teachers with experience, and it has gotten way more expensive to live in the city than it was a decade ago. Better to save up your cash and come for 6 months to just live and adventure around on a budget.

Selling Harvard shirts? Save your luggage space for snacks from Trader Joe's!!!

 

[ElQueso]

Harvard shirts may be a more-or-less tongue in cheek example, but I agree with Steve completely - you can do better selling used clothes than you can teaching English, I'm pretty sure of that. I don't know that you'd need to sell them on ML either, at the end of the day - there are a number of shops that sell used American and European clothes here. It's not legal (or at best very, very difficult) to import used clothes for resell and the clothes go for amazing prices when they are sold because people want to wear fashionable clothes that don't fall apart after a couple of washes (as many things sold here do).

I have friends in Paraguay who always ask me to bring clothes with me that they can sell (there's an even bigger market there as I understand it) and at one point they were actually looking for some way to get large shipments of used clothes in via chartered plane or something. Unfortunately, their competition (people either in the government or who have friends in the government) get to take the contributions that come in from the Salvation Army and other charity organizations and instead of passing them out to poor people, co-opt the shipments and sell the clothes in their stores.

Clothes would be the easiest to get past customs, in relative bulk (even if one had to pay for extra luggage allowance), without any issues, than anything else I can think of.

 

[Ceviche]

There's an even bigger clothes market in Paraguay as I understand it

True.

 

[mulderfox]

maybe have his friend bring electronics to sell to locals and peanut butter and marple syrup and things of that sort to sell to expats

 

[ElQueso]

The issue with electronics is that you can only bring so many without running the issue of paying the extra tax at customs, they're high-priced items and may take a while to sell.

Problem with selling to expats is they may not want to spend 50% (or more?) markup on items they can get at home whether or not they cant get it here

 

[ben]

The issue with electronics is that you can only bring so many without running the issue of paying the extra tax at customs, they're high-priced items and may take a while to sell.

Problem with selling to expats is they may not want to spend 50% (or more?) markup on items they can get at home whether or not they cant get it here

Agreed. I tried once to sell something here - a baby stroller - in perfect brand new condition, with a few months' use, for the new price. This was not to make money but just to recoup (part of) my investment (getting it here had entailed substantial expense). I could not believe the sniping that came my way in terms of how my price compares to what it costs on Amazon. Yes, Amazon. And this was by no means a 50% markup.

I ended up meeting somebody who actually knew about strollers and prices and life here, and who saw it for the bargain it was to get the stroller here at this price, sans headache.