Last week, I signed a form saying that I wouldn't be requesting a new contract here in the ME after the summer.
I leave with some regret -- the desert has been the traditional place for fasting and purification, and that's pretty much what happened. I saved the amount I wanted to save and who can put a price on health, free time, and peace and quiet?
But life is calling.
I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do next.
Of course the girlfriend wants to get married; marriage is the only religion Russian provincial girls have.
The possibilities for destinations are limitless, if perhaps all equally pointless. I could debauch in Brazil, seek adventure in Africa, retrace my path to Russia or Thailand, or do practically anything else.
But getting outside my comfort zone has proved to be good for me, so I thought I should continue that.
I picked the most fucked-up destination I could think of, the one that I, really, want to visit the least.
It's a very dangerous country, in terms of homicide rate; its economy is a complete wreck. It's also been torn by civil unrest in recent years and its corrupt, bloated, oligarchical political system is in shambles. As if all that weren't enough, it's suffered from several devastating natural disasters recently.
On the bright side, it's pretty cheap to live there and it's universally recognized for producing some really beautiful international sex symbols.
Nonetheless, there are practically no sex tourists there, and the waves of dorky backpackers are pretty much absent.
You guessed it!
And I'm not going anywhere cool like Miami or Chicago either; I'm going to small-town bumfuk shitty bible-belt tornado-alley Dirty South. I'm going home baby!
The plan is to take the girlfriend on a student visa; and we'll see if we can live together under stress. There's a fairly large international student program there, so supposedly there are EFL jobs, also. (Of course there are a lot of Mexican immigrants, also.)
The last time I lived in America was summer of 1997 to about the fall of 1998. Damn near fifteen years!
There are a few more practical reasons to go back -- my father's health isn't great -- but basically I want to answer all these questions: does America really suck? Is the quality of life really better abroad? Is it really difficult to re-patriate? Are my employment opportunities really shitty? Do Russian girls automatically become mean strippers, when exposed to American culture?
It'll probably only be nine months to a year, but baby I'm coming home.
18 comments:
just marry the long-suffering broad and get it over with. you might want to tie the knot sooner rather than later. studies show that couples who live together before marriage have a higher divorce rate.
good call on taking her to a small town in nowhere. less temptation.
Welcome home! I hope you'll still post, using your expat perspective to poke fun at America's foilbles.
I'm very curious to hear about your job hunting success. Maybe you should marry, then divorce your wife after she has a baby and have her go on welfare. Then you can both leave the country again and live off of the money that is deposited every month in the bank.
oh yeah, I think I'll have a lot of stuff to say about America 2012, don't worry about that.
Welcome back home, ETX! Just try not to stare too much at all of the fat people here. It'll be a shock to the system, no doubt.
Keep up the posting; I'm from the US and live in Colombia. I quite enjoy your blog.
I think this is fantastic news. Try to teach the Mexican immigrants something useful.
And maybe take your girlfriend on weekend vacations to cool places like Miami or Chicago, so that she doesn't get the uh, wrong impression of life in the U.S. in whichever Southern town you talked her into moving to.
Good luck!
hee hee, small town America will seem like The Land of Milk and Honey compared to the village near Vodkaberg where she grew up.
Wow, a seasoned and very jaded (in a good way) expat is about to violate rule #1; never, ever take a woman back to the United Snakes. You are a big boy now, so no snarky comments from me. I wish you the best. You do owe it to your loyal (and sloth filled) readers and fellow expats - just how this all goes down; screaming matches, crying, infidelities, Russian-girl-trades-up, etc. The whole lot of it. I know a guy who just pulled this off after 4 years in NE Brasil. No word yet on how he's making out. Cheers, Anonymous Alpha Whiskey
the other option is just to marry her and stay in the MidEast or in Russia which would be just as much of a doorway to disaster. A student visa is cheaper than marriage / J1 visa / divorce lawyer, by my calculations.
Point well taken. But, alas, my cruel calculus also involves the brutal reality of people who "punch above their weight". You will find out if you have soon after arriving - I have some acquaintances who tried to pull this off in Alaska, soon after the "ice curtain" opened in '91. They all ended badly, save for one dude, and he was making large bank running an IT business. She did however, spend the cash as soon as he could earn it and he always seemed to appear - apprehensive? Nice woman though - just so completely focused on money. They had a kid, so she is staying around. You could go to Argentina, but teaching English would pay shit, and being poor there would be really shitty. Anonymous AW
Well, it's like the acid test for her, you know, also. If she wants to run off, she can do so, and I'll get back to debauching, which will probably make blog readers happy, in any event.
If attitude really counts for much in life - then you are golden. You might also consider changing tack and keeping the blog going - something on the order of the gringo and russkie go to Amerika to see what life throws at them. Could be a really entertaining read. Could also be a real slog to follow -) Anonymous AW
Blog will definitely keep going -- English Teacher X in America might be very interesting, I agree.
Going back is often not going home. Hope it goes well, though.
I think you'll like it and so will she. I can only see the need to visit Russia yearly to be an issue, but with your savings being halfway to buying a nice house outright, and her getting the odd bit of part time work, it shouldn't be too tight.
I'm well over the idea of 'acid test'. At our ages chicks and guys generally slow down in making changes. i'm in my mid 30s and can't even be bothered changing jobs despite a possible difference of 20k euro.
the only way she will trade up is if you fuck it up by being a psycho, or she happens to meet mister perfect and he goes all out for her. but then again, most chicks would leave their husbands if david beckham proposed to them, nothing to do with russian chicks.
Shit! Just saw this. ETX returning to the USA? I never thought I'd see the day...
Being a returnee myself (though not one gone nearly as long as you've been) I can say it's a mixed bag. There's the potential for better income (and what isn't better than a Russian TEFL salary, aside from your current UAE salary?) and the chance for doing something non-TEFL if you so choose. Yet there's also the drudgery and routine of life in the USA. Well, if it sucks too much you can always go elsewhere--that's the beauty of tefl, really.
(Or rather English Teacher M2. or MY. Or former English Teacher M. Or reformed...or recovering. Ahhh fuck it. Good luck in the States!
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