The New Year Cometh

I haven't been updating this blog as often as I originally planned, but that's ok. I've kept up a slow but steady stream of updates during my time here in Ukraine. Since the year is about to end with a bang, and a new year is approaching like a zombie wooly mammoth, I figured it would be a good idea to do a short review of this last year.

Last year around this time, I had quit my job back in the US, and set about preparing myself to leave the country. I spent much of January and a good bit of February in a southern US state, selling, giving away, or just tossing most of the things that I've accumulated throughout my life. I initially gave myself about 3 weeks to do it, but ended up staying there for over a month, with that still not being enough time to wrap things up. I then went back to the state where I lived at the time (another southern US state), and spent the last week of my time in the US packing up and spending time with my parents.

In late February, I left the US and arrived in Ukraine, as you can read here. My flight over was a bit of an adventure, but only because I had never flown overseas before. I arrived in Ukraine, and started my first job, teaching English for a language school owned by an American.

I spent my first several months learning how to do my job, and met a few women, one of whom ended up becoming my first girlfriend here. My time with her was fun, albeit short, and we ended up parting ways after about a month. Still, she provided me with my first taste of the dating experience here in Ukraine. Not long after I parted ways with her, I started learning just how different Ukrainian women can be.

In the meantime, my job had not turned out to be quite the dream job I initially thought. I liked teaching just fine (and still do), but I didn't like working for the owner of the school, who was a habitual liar and scam artist. He ended up firing me from the school, but when things seemed to be at their bleakest, I was rescued by other, more honest people.

I started working at a new language school, and also continued to meet women, where I found out firsthand the dark side of coupling with women here. However, not long after, I ended up meeting several other women, one of which became my second girlfriend, and the other became my best friend here. If it wasn't for the latter's help, I would have had to go back to the US, or live in a cardboard box.

Thankfully, things became more stable for me again, and I was able to move into another apartment. Shortly after doing so, I met my third (not so temporary) girlfriend, who I am still with. Which brings me to now....

In less than two weeks, I'm leaving my current city for another, much larger city here in Ukraine. Unfortunately, while I've had my moments here, I've found it difficult to survive with the little amount of work that I've had. I was able to eke out a living for a while, but I'm tired of having to scrounge up every last kopek to pay rent. I accepted a job at a large chain language school in Ukraine, which is guaranteeing me a decent salary in a much larger city. I'm quite sad to leave my current city, but at the same time excited to finally go somewhere else. My girlfriend has made noises about following me to that city, as she has family there, but we'll see what happens. For now, I'm just going to enjoy the obligatory celebrating that comes with the new year.

Pimpin' It

Despite the title, this post isn't about me becoming a superfly pimp out here in the rundown ghetto of southern Ukraine. Instead, I'm pimping my mentor English Teacher X's book, "How to Survive Living Abroad" (click here for the Smashwords edition). For those of you who don't know who English Teacher X is...read his blog, and then buy his books. His blog was probably my biggest influence on becoming an English teacher, a profession that I am still currently enjoying. My blog posts, "Two Girls, One Night parts 1 and 2" are included in the book.

As an added incentive for my readers, I added a postscript to the story, which adds a few details to the story that didn't make it into my original posts, and shows the eventual fate of the girls involved. The book is currently free on both Amazon and Smashwords, so there's no excuse to not check it out.

In other news, the Temporary Girlfriend has turned out to be not as temporary as I thought. Also, I might move to another city in Ukraine. More on that soon.