I was fired from my job last weekend, and I'm very happy about it.
You see, I wasn't very happy with my job. The school I was working at is owned by an American (well, technically by his wife, but everyone knows who runs the show there), and I didn't much like working for him. He had a nice school office with plenty of room and a wealth of teaching tools. The teachers he hired were all good, effective teachers, and he ran a tight ship. The problem was that he treated his employees like shit, and tried to get free work out of them.
It only took about two weeks to figure out he was full of shit on quite a few things he had told me prior to arriving. However, being brand new in a foreign country, and being a bit scared to forge my own path at that time, I hung on and stuck it out, determined to make the best of the situation and do what I had worked so hard to prepare for the last several years.
During the time I was there, I heard many stories about his time in Ukraine (and before). In fact, I probably spent a good amount of time here just listening to him talk. He's one of those "self-made" men, or at least he likes people to believe so. He was apparently an entrepeneur back in the US, who one day decided to leave everything behind and move to Ukraine, just to be with a woman he met on a marriage agency site. They're still together, and in fact, the school is named after her.
He told me quite a few stories about the people he worked with and met here, with very few of those stories being positive. He said his last business partner (in Ukraine) tried to extort money from him. He also said one of the other guys at that business (who now owns another school in the same city) ran a prostitution ring. And he said that every single Western expat he met here was mentally ill. I can't really debate him on the last one, but I have to mention that he is certainly no exception to the rule.
Anyway, his idea of training me was making me sit in on class after class after class, listening to him teach and then trying to teach myself. When I taught while he was sitting in, he was sure to stop me every 2 minutes and then rant and rave about how shitty of a teacher I am. Well, he ended up giving me students of my own, but they were few and far between, and after 3 months, I was still required to sit in and listen to classes, despite getting much more experience from my own classes.
I also found out that his school wasn't quite as successful as he had led me to believe. Shortly after arrival, I found out that they were about a month behind on their rent for the office. About once a week, the landlord would come in, and I would get to see the owner drop everything he was doing (even in the middle of a class) to scramble up some money. He also asked me several times to borrow money. The first time he paid me back very quickly. I have yet to be paid back for the second time.
About halfway through the time that I've been here, another American showed up, with the same hopes. I wasted no time in letting the new guy know what he was in for, and after he witnessed many of the things I told him, he quit after just a week and a half. Despite all of this, though, I kept sticking it out, although mainly for the fact that the owner still owed me money.
Everything pretty much came to a head last weekend. In Ukraine, it's illegal for anyone to stay over 90 days without a visa of some sort. The problem is, it's almost impossible for most people to get visas, so the majority of expats who have been here for any amount of time longer than 90 days are here illegally. As bad as that sounds, though, it's pretty much the normal for most everything here.
Last weekend, the owner of the school was supposed to help me with one of those illegal work-arounds. I was supposed to travel to the border and see a certain border agent who only worked on certain days, who would update the stamp in my passport and change the computer records for my stay. The problem, though, was that I needed someone to come with me who could translate, as the border guard doesn't speak English. Unfortunately, all of these details hadn't been made known to me until about week before it was supposed to happen, despite having asked the owner about it several times before I arrived, with reassurances that we would cross that bridge when we got to it.
Well, we got to that bridge, and the owner suddenly became very uncooperative. Apparently it was my own fault that I hadn't met a women who I was close enough with to go with me to the border, even though I didn't know this would be a necessity. It was my fault for not saying something sooner, and my fault for not asking for details (even though I did). When I politely informed him that I did in fact ask for details several times BEFORE I EVEN ARRIVED, he flew into a rage and kicked me out of the school.
Now there I was, without a job, without a passport stamp, and without help of any kind. The owner of the school still owed me money, which I didn't expect to see past that point. What was I to do? Well, I'd find out pretty quickly.
More to come later...
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