Aaron Wagner | Admissions Advisor

My name is Aaron and I’m from Florida.  Some of my passions include surfing, fitness, running, hiking, exploring, staying healthy, going on new adventures, and living a happy and peaceful life.  In life, whatever I do, I try my absolute best to do it with all of my heart.

Everyone has their reason why they’re interested in travel and for me, it’s surfing and exploring.  I started traveling at the young age of 14 and the rest is history from there. For a long while most of my travels were focused on going to new countries only to surf.  Then, as my passion for travel and adventure grew, I began traveling to truly explore the Earth.

From a young age, I remember watching the classic surf video “Endless Summer” and how the surfers went from country to country surfing new waves, going on adventures, and meeting new people. I thought to myself 'What if I could do that someday?' Spoiler alert: I did and so can you. Well, that was always a dream of mine and I just didn’t know how to make it happen.  I thought surfing and traveling the world was just something only pro surfers or the wealthy could do. As time went on life happened. I went to school, graduated with my Physical Education degree, and started working as a fitness trainer for several years.  I would travel here or there, but I still felt that there was more opportunity to travel out there for me.  

Just like you, I wanted to live abroad, travel, and explore the world so I started searching for ways to live and travel abroad. Teaching English abroad kept coming up.  I figured, if not now then when? I got my TEFL certification through ITA and moved to Taiwan.  Thanks to ITA I was able to make my dreams of surfing and traveling the world a reality. I was able to surf, travel, and explore 13 different countries because of ITA.  To date, I’ve surfed, hiked, and explored 23 countries and now have lots of travel stories to share. All I can say is that I wish I knew about this amazing opportunity sooner.  Whenever I tell people about teaching, living, and traveling abroad, the places you can go, and the things you can do, the classic response I usually get is “are you serious, is this for real, why haven’t we heard about this before" and then finally, "where do I sign up for this?”  Well, teaching English abroad and traveling year-round is very real and I’m here to tell you as a real testimony to go for it.  Don’t wait, don’t think about it, and don’t let fear or worry or even money get in the way.  Just go for it and pursue your dreams of living and traveling abroad.  Get excited and stoked and let the adventure begin!

I’m from Florida and I went to college at the University of Central Florida.

As a young surfer, it was my dream to go on a surf trip out of the country in search of some of the best waves. After telling my dad my plan, he decided to join me on this surfing adventure. At 14 years old I had finally saved up enough money to go to Costa Rica. My experience was awesome. I got to surf some of the best waves I’d ever surfed, hike through tropical rainforests searching for waterfalls, eat great food, stay at a surf camp, and meet lots of other surfers my same age. In addition, I got to practice some Spanish that I had been practicing in school. It was the trip that got me stoked about surf, travel, and adventure!

Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, New Zealand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, St. Maarten, Iceland, France, UK, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria.

 I lived and taught abroad in Taiwan for 5 years.

My best travel story would be a toss-up between surfing perfect waves with next to no other surfers out in Taiwan, the Hobbiton dinner experience in New Zealand, solo hiking and going down ice slides in Zermatt Switzerland, eating WAY too much wasabi at a sushi bar in Japan and giving the locals a good laugh, or hitchhiking (not by choice of course) through the Taroko mountains and then camping in the backyard of a church but only after the locals tracked the pastor down and woke him up HAHA!

My favorite ethnic food has to be Nasi Goreng from Indonesia.

I’m excited about working at ITA so I can now help others do what I was able to do.