Some people in another thread seemed really interested in the story, so here ya go.
It is a story spanning two years. Best of times, worst of times. I'll give a short rundown just so I'm not a tease, but I someday plan on telling the whole story somewhere.
I lived in Taiwan for two years. First year I was an English teacher and studied Mandarin at a language training center in the mornings. Nearly every national university in Taiwan has a mandarin training center for the local foreigners. It was great, but I wanted a more authentic experience(Taiwan is an extremely haunting, romantic place, imo, and I wanted to live it authentically immersed in the language and culture). So after the first year, I found a school that would not only give me a massive raise( $35usd/hr) but they paid me under the table so I avoided taxes. I did this all with saving a decent nest egg in mind. The next six months I moved to the deep south, a place called 內埔 to live and work on a pineapple farm. My Chinese got really good(that's its own story, honestly.)
After some risky financial decisions (a fancy way of saying betting on McGregor to ko Mayweather) I was in debt, nearly out of cash, and had developed a rather valuable linguistic skill in Mandarin.
I saw that the Army had $30,000(yes you're reading that right) bonuses for those who could pass the DLAB; a test developed by the DOD to test an applicants verbal IQ and penchant for learning languages. The recruiters told me I would not pass it. I did. They sent my ass to Ft. Jackson.
After basic training, they sent me to DLI--Defense Language Institute--in Monterey, CA; the worlds premier foreign language school. I tried telling someone, "Hey, I actually already speak Mandarin. I don't need to go to school to learn it again." All I was told was, "It ain't the Mandarin we want you to know, trainee!" In hindsight they were right. DLI trains you to ostensibly be a spy. So you need to know mountains of political and military language. And having learned a bulk of my Mandarin from pineapple farmers and cute Taiwanese college students, I may not have been much help in a skiff or in Washington.
At DLI you're still in a military unit, but you're also in a "schoolhouse" with a chairperson. So you have military bosses and bosses at school. Keep in mind you are a student, but it is also your job, and what will eventually be at stake is the lives of soldiers, contractors, special operators, and who knows who else, so they take your success very, very seriously. You are assigned a language, and only in very rare circumstances can switch languages. At the time I was there, (2017-2019) the hottest languages were Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and Levantine Arabic(spoken in Syria and Iraq). Funny enough I got there and they assigned me Korean. I told my platoon sergeant that I already spoke Mandarin, and since it was a high priority language, they switched me with some poor schlub without even confronting him about it.
At DLI, you are in class 7 hours a day. That's right: 7 hours a day of language learning. I am still of the belief that not even immersion can beat the language education at DLI. And trust me, I've done both. The style of learning depends upon what schoolhouse you end up in, but mine regardless it is going to be listening intensive because, like I said, your job one day will be listening and reading, mostly; unless you end up with the CIA, but I don't know anything about that...
A guy down the hall from me in the barracks ended up being the nations 6th ranked mountain runner, and we began training together after class and on weekends. My fitness levels went through the roof, scored perfect on the Physical Fitness Test, and since I had a background in Mandarin, had a 4.0 GPA with little effort. Meanwhile half of my classmates are failing. The failure rates for CAT IV languages hovers around 50%.
So far, I would venture to guess that this story sounds great, right? Adventure, success, some level of intrigue, and world class linguistics?! And yes, that all may be true, but with such a high level of success comes a target on one's back. I am an outspoken and brash bastard. Mixed with success, this leads to as much hate as it does love. There was a time where brash bastards were what the Army wanted, but not nowadays, my friends.
From here, the story is filled with sex, backstabbing, immersion trips to Taiwan, Nazis(yes, I promise this is true and I have proof,) Jordan Peterson, a schizophrenic Mexican pretending to be Jewish, and my political allegiances coming into question by the commanding officer of Delta Company.
Like I said, this is nothing in comparison to the real, in depth story, but this is the brief beginning of DLI, and my time as an Army linguist.
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