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.

Update

Just a quick post, as I feel I've been neglecting this blog too much. Things haven't changed much since I last updated. The Temporary Girlfriend is still here, although she is supposed to leave in less than a week. We'll see if she actually does. In the meantime, I've spent most of my time either working or with her. I'll probably have more to post on both of those subjects, but for now, just rest assured that I'm still alive and well. For how long that will remain, I'm not sure, but things are still "OK" at the moment.

Attack of the Crazy

Last week, I was supposed to go to Vinnitsa to meet a "friend" who I knew back in the US. My "friend" was actually a Polish/Ukrainian girl who I dated several years ago. Our dating relationship was kinda brief, as she quickly started to prove that she was a major headcase. However, even after I ended the brief and not very serious relationship, I did meet up with her a few times after. Not for sex, as we never quite made it that far, but to hang out, and to try to pick up a bit of Russian from her.

Shortly before I left for Ukraine, she went on a major campaign of trying to get me to stay. Of course, this proved to be futile, as I wasn't about to be talked out of it by anyone, least of all her. Shortly after I came out here, she called my parents and tried convincing them that I was in danger out here, and spouting off some other crazy things like saying that someone back in the US was trying to kill me. She did make my parents worried, but only in that they thought I would be crazy to keep talking to her. I emailed her and told her to never call my parents again.

Even after all that, though, I agreed to meet up with her when she came out to Ukraine. Her home town is in western Ukraine, so a long bus trip would have awaited me. Two days before I was supposed to go see her, I informed her that I was dating a girl here, and I was hesitant about going to see her, based on past history. This set off the histrionics. She accused me of hurting her by not going to see her, called me every name in the book, with her voice getting that crazy tinge to it that usually spells imminent danger. I hung up on her and didn't answer any more of her calls. That set off a flood of text messages that continued unabated until she left, presumably sometime today.

Since I'm a complete asshole, I decided to share many of these text messages with my readers. Let these serve as a lesson to you all - never stick it in teh crazy! Just imagine how much worse it would be if I actually had.


"Enjoy local sluts,baby boy! She will go to Istanbul and start a "consumation" career, asking Turks topless to buy her drinks and you'd better go to the local KozhVenDispanser,get checked for syphilis and gonorrhea! Adios gringos"

"Good evening ****achka! Is your girlie entertaing rich Turks already?"

" ****ka - moj amerikanec,ja tozhe amerikanka i imeju gorazdo bolshe prav,i ne tolko na **** ! Ukrainskie devushki nujny emu kak razvlechenie,povysit samoocenku ;) "

 "Hi ****,you know - you are very mean,heartless and cruel. We made plans to meet long before I came to the Ukraine. You hurt me real bad and I dont deserve it!Never expected that of you, how mean and two-faced you are. Why hurt me so bad???"

"Hows your Turkish Delight doing, ****? Thank you very much for how bad,mean and cruel you have been to me during this trip and breaking our plans"

" **** the Traitor double dater. Girlie is practicing her future job in Istanbul on you - Istanbul Constantinopol goddammit that shit to fucking hell" 

The Temporary Girlfriend

I currently have a temporary girlfriend. Her name is "N" (thankfully not yet another "Z"), and she lives one building away from me. I met her the same way I've been meeting all of the other girls here, through a popular online dating site.

"N" doesn't speak much English, and I don't speak much Russian, but that hasn't stopped anything. I met her only a day after talking to her online, deciding to meet in between our two apartment buildings. As per the norm, she initially refused to go to my apartment, but quickly relented once it was clear that we would have trouble communicating with speech only, and even then, only after making me promise not to put my hands all over her. Needless to say, I ended up putting my hands all over her, but only after a full bottle of cognac later. However, she didn't give in to sex all that easily, and made me wait more than a week for it.

She came over again two nights later, and then the next, and the next...and she's been over every night since, about two weeks later. We hit it off pretty quickly, and our personalities match. She has a great sense of humor, loves spending time with me, and has even cooked dinner for me several times.

So...why is she a "temporary" girlfriend? Because there's a catch (just like with every other girl here). She's leaving for Istanbul in a couple of weeks for work, and will be there for a long time. She doesn't know the exact date yet, and is going to work for a boss who wants her to marry him (typical Turkish clown). I joined in the chorus of all of her friends and family in warning her that she risks being sold into sex slavery, but she says she needs the job to pay off some rather large medical bills. I believe her story, despite the fact that Ukrainian women are generally not to be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Despite all of that, though, I'm thoroughly enjoying my time with her.

For Great Force

Saturday was another day spent with the boss, this time at the birthday part for his friend's wife, who has seemingly taken quite a liking to me (no, not like that). Birthday parties in Ukraine are quite fun, involving a metric ton of food and alcohol, both of which are to be consumed in great quantities, with the only interruptions being smoke breaks and the quite frequent toasts by each of the guests.

After only about 4 hours of non-stop eating and boozing, I informed everyone that I had to leave soon, as I was meeting a girl that evening. This quickly became the number one subject of conversation at the table, with everyone commenting and asking questions about her. Of course, this all resulted in yet another toast, made for me. The guy sitting next to me, a Ukrainian Militsiya (Police) Colonel, cautioned me on being careful with meeting random Ukrainian women, disregarding the fact that I had already met this girl and spent a quite harmless night with her. However, his toast to me was the phrase (translated from Russian), "For great force". My boss translated the phrase for me, and explained that sexual prowess and virility is referred to as "force". So...here's for great force!

Ukrainian Housewarming

I just moved into my new apartment a few days ago, and I was giving a proper Ukrainian housewarming. My boss, the owner of the small English school that I teach at now, helped me bring my stuff over, and also made a point of picking up a few housewarming presents, namely some food (sizeable chunks of ham and cheese, and Georgian bread) and alcohol (Georgian cognac). We spent the evening hanging out on the balcony of my ninth floor flat, eating and drinking while bullshitting about various things and looking out at the river. I have a great view of the river here, as I live only about 400 meters away from it, with no buildings in between. Later, after we finished, he took me on a short nightime tour of some close-by places, ending in a bar while trying some Becherovka. My boss made plans for me for the next day, to show me around more of the district during daylight. Of course, I wasn't about to say no.

So, the next day, after classes, we met up with a friend of his, a retired police officer, and took a long walk around the district. We made a pit-stop in the same bar as the night before, grabbing another shot of Becherovka, and then continued on. The tour ended at his flat, where his wife proceeded to serve me some delicious borscht while informing me that there was a wedding party with some single women who were looking forward to meeting me. I had already double-booked myself for dates that evening, but figured that visiting a party wouldn't hurt, so off we went after finishing the meal, along with another shot of home-made spiced vodka.

The wedding party was at a local pizzeria not far from my boss's flat, and sure enough, there were a couple of cute, single girls there. My boss's wife warned me before that they both like to drink, and were a little drunk, but they appeared quite sober when I met them. We spent a great part of the rest of the day at the pizzeria, where we made repeated toasts along with shouts of "Vorka! Vorka!", which apparently is a tradition that involves the guests exhorting the bride and groom to kiss repeatedly. Many of the participants were indulging themselves in vodka, but I stuck to weak Ukrainian beer, as I'd already had a few shots of hard alcohol earlier, and I'm a fucking lightweight.

Unfortunately, the beer didn't really help. Minutes passed into hours, and day passed into evening. I didn't really forget about the two dates I booked, but I was having too good of a time to really care. I made it home pretty late, with the help of my boss's friend and his wife, who proceeded to invite me to her birthday party next weekend. I went up to my flat and immediately got online and proceeded to apologize to both of the women who I stood up. Surprisingly, neither of them were very angry, at least as far as I could tell. One of them evening made the comment, "So this - typical Slavic housewarming!" I guess she was right. I hope I don't have to move again anytime soon.