UNC Around the World
Entrepreneurs, social workers, teachers, actors and volunteers are among the 800-plus UNC alumni living and working abroad. Ten graduates share their stories following their life-changing decisions to take their talents to countries spanning the globe.
Starring on an English-Language TV Program in Taiwan
Those who watch the English learning program “Studio Classroom,” from San Francisco to Vietnam to New Zealand, may recognize Kaylah Woody as one of the television teachers.
But there may be a day soon when they know her as the voice of a main character in Choobieland, an English-languge children’s cartoon, which teaches life lessons and friendship and is produced in Taiwan.
Woody, who graduated from the Theatre Education program, helps Studio Classroom produce magazines, and the television programs that accompany them, through teaching on television, acting in skits and script writing. She tours the island a few times a year to teach in person and helps run an English Bible study program — it takes about eight hours to get from one end of the island to the other. Two days on the job are never alike.
When she moved to Taipei, she knew only Chinese greetings. After four months of Chinese lessons, she still uses a translator in meetings, but she can order a meal in a restaurant and survive in a grocery store.
“I can’t have a conversation,” Woody says. “But I can get by.”
Woody always wanted to work overseas, and when opportunity came along through an agency, she grabbed it. Taiwan had the best offer among the countries that she considered.
“I’m a Christian, and I believe God opened the door for me to come to Taiwan,” she says. NV
—Dan England is a Greeley journalist.
