“Ukraine will be there forever; I won’t”, she told me: how my life in Ukraine almost never came to be

A short story of near-misses, butterfly effects, and romantic/career what-ifs: a mini career and awful romance autobiography of sorts. And how a run of fortuitous events almost changed the course of [my] history.

‘It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life, we don’t necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can – and that is what we should do.’ 

Richard Feynman

We start our story in late September 2002: my arrival in Edinburgh for a Master’s in International Relations. A nearly 5-year relationship had ended just a couple months before.

Late autumn/early winter: a new relationship. Just after we had met, my girlfriend was offered a job teaching at a university in Mongolia. She wanted me to go with her and a decision had to be made quickly. We barely knew each other. Mongolia? ‘What the hell would I do in Mongolia?’ I asked.

‘Teach English?’ she answered, unsure herself.

Teach English?! Are you kidding me? I went to Edinburgh thinking about a career in the foreign service, or in the world of international development. No way in hell would I ever teach English in some hellhole like Mongolia. Or anywhere, for that matter. Teach in a high school, maybe. But none of this teaching English as a foreign language malarkey. 

Early spring, 2005: we had just split up. A career in the foreign service never materialised. We had gone to Nigeria together to work for an NGO. A tremendous experience, but a career in international development was not for me. 

I was at a loose end – what to do next?

I decided to teach English as a foreign language, and applied for a CELTA (the Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). I spent a month in Prague, and barely passed the course (a long story, but it involved way too many shenanigans and way too little sleep: don’t go to a fun place like Prague to do a CELTA, the temptations will kill you.)

There was a fledgling romance there, and an ever-so-brief consideration to return to Prague, but…

I went to work for a couple of months for a summer school job just outside London. As an introduction to the world of teaching English, I couldn’t have experienced anything more fun. Wow, if this is what teaching is like…

My first job, my first proper long-term contract job, was due to start in late August 2005, in Lviv, western Ukraine. Amazing when I think about it now, but it came down to two choices: Lviv and…Moscow.

I’m pretty sure I made the right decision on that one. 

Though I had applied for that job before my summer school gig, and was fully committed to going to Ukraine anyway, there was one more bonus: an ever-so-brief romantic encounter with a summer school colleague from Krakow, a mere overnight train or bus journey from Lviv. There was some promise there, I think.

Mid-August, 2005: an epic whirlwind of a weekend in Chicago with Andrew, my good pal from high school. Two to three days of reminiscing, boozing, bar-hopping, football-watching…

The day before I was due to leave, to return to Belfast for a few days before heading off to Lviv, I fell head over heels for a Belfast-born barmaid. 

Barely a few hours after we met, she begged me to stay in Chicago.

‘Ukraine will be there forever; I won’t,’ she told me. 

Despite her attempts to get me to stay in Chicago, I wasn’t going back on my decision, tough as it was. 

But I did delay my flight by a day…and then another one…and another one. I ended up staying in Chicago a few days longer than originally planned.

Dublin airport, a few days later, for my flight to Budapest, from where I would take my train to Lviv. As I looked up at the departure board, the flight right above mine, at the very same time: Chicago.

I don’t believe in signs, thankfully.

Late August, 2005: it was year one of a ‘two-year plan’: teach English for a couple of years, in two different locations, have a bit of fun, get the adventure out of my system, and then go and find myself an even more proper job and even a more proper ‘career’.

Lviv: an incredible experience, and as tempting as it would have been to say, I was sticking to the plan, and it was onto Basque Country for year two.

That didn’t go so well and I didn’t want to wrap up my ‘career’ on a sour note. I extended it to a 3rd year, and opted for Riga, Latvia. 

That was going to be it, for sure, absolutely, no doubt.

Early June 2008: my time in Riga came to end, a mixed bag of teaching and emotions, but this was definitely the end of the road. Now I just had to figure out what to do next.

In the meantime, a bit of travelling for a few weeks, starting in Crimea, then onto Georgia for a week after a three-day ferry across the Black Sea, and then a week in Armenia before returning to Riga for a day or two before heading to the UK.

Riga, late June, a late morning at the Belgian Beer Café with a student I had a massive crush on. We both had a fondness for Belgian beer.

‘Stay in Riga?’ she asked me. Maybe it was the beer talking. 

With no plans for anything career-related, it was back to the UK for a second summer school job, just to fill the time and earn some money, in Canterbury.

August, 2008: russia invaded Georgia, barely a month after I had been there. Georgia, a country that I found enrapturing, and a place I thought I might eventually return to one day.

September, 2008, Israel for a friend’s wedding: while drinking Guinness on my birthday with my pals in Jerusalem, we heard the news that Lehman Brothers had collapsed, and the financial crisis of 2008 had begun.

After the wedding, I travelled a bit, and in Amman, Jordan, I said to myself, ‘this wouldn’t be a bad place to live one day.’

I returned to the US to consider my next steps, my next career. Superb timing, right in the middle of a financial crisis. No luck in the job market, but I really had no idea what I wanted to do. Journalism? Publishing? A return to the financial sector? It didn’t matter, jobs were hard to come by.

I applied for Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in the UK and New Hampshire. I wanted to do it in the UK but that didn’t work out – I had a place at my top choice option, the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and it was contingent on my final reference being received by the deadline. I was waiting on my notoriously unreliable boss from Riga.

It arrived a few days too late. 

I decided on Keene State in New Hampshire.

But that would only start in September 2009, and it was now December 2008. What was I going to do to fill the time before then?

January, 2009: I arrived in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for one last teaching English stint, just to fill the time. This was not a return to this ‘career’, it was going to be, 100% for sure, my last time doing this kind of teaching.

I was also there to study russian. So it was kind of a ‘kill two birds with one stone’ experience.

Near the end of my time there, a new colleague arrived from the UK, and we hit it off immediately. 

She had studied languages at university: German and russian, and had lived for a year outside of Moscow, where she had done her CELTA.

She was going to be returning to the UK to do her Master’s in London, and I was going to the US to start my PGCE in high school social studies in New Hampshire. We both lamented that the Norwich option had fallen through. We could have been so close to each other.

We discussed the future, working abroad together, teaching together in international schools, all that stuff.

My PGCE experience wasn’t pleasant. The first few months at Keene were fine, but then it came time for my student-teaching experience in Manchester, New Hampshire. Manchester, England might have been a better option.

It was a nightmare and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to teach history or civics or geography or whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be teaching. 

But still, I applied for jobs in international schools. I didn’t want to teach in the US, or the UK for that matter, only abroad.

I wasn’t having much luck.

Spring, 2010: my girlfriend and I split up and it hit me hard. All those plans and now…what?

‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.’

Robert Burns

I persisted with job applications and finally got an offer: at an international school in Tbilisi, Georgia. I was thrilled to be returning to Georgia. And actually, when I had returned to teaching English one last time in Bishkek in 2009, I also had an offer in Tbilisi, and by sheer coincidence, the director of studies there was my former boss in Lviv, a terrific guy and as tempted as I was…

While I was corresponding/negotiating with the school, I set off on yet another adventure, starting in Romania. From there it was onto Moldova, Transdniestria, Ukraine and finishing up in Poland. I was on the road for a month.

Whilst travelling, somehow or another, the job in Tbilisi fell through. I’m not sure what happened, but the correspondence dried up, and anyway, the director of the school was a bit shady.

So, at yet another loose end and with nothing to do, I ended up back in the UK for a third – and final! – summer school teaching stint, this time in Wokingham, in the English countryside. 

Summer, 2010, Wokingham: I had no job lined up for after August. I didn’t even have internet access at the school to look for jobs. On my one day off a week I headed into London to stay with my sister and apply for jobs from there.

Mid-August, and still no ideas. I didn’t want to return to the US. 

A colleague and good friend was heading to Cairo to teach in September. She encouraged me to apply there. What, teach English again?! Are you kidding me? I couldn’t, I was done with that, definitely. I wasn’t going down that route again, no way!

Time was ticking and…nothing.

So I bit the bullet and applied for a few jobs: in Cairo, Damascus, Baku, Palermo and…Kyiv.

My friend pleaded with me to go to Cairo. My long-time friends said the same, they said to get away from Eastern Europe and go somewhere different, for a different type of adventure. 

I agonised over the decision, going back and forth. It came down to Cairo and Kyiv. Baku intrigued me too, and the salary there was absurdly high – it would be business English to oil workers.

No matter what I decided, it was ONLY GOING TO BE FOR 1 YEAR until I sorted myself out and applied for other jobs. 

I couldn’t resist: Ukraine was pulling me, and even though the Irish barmaid in Chicago had told me that Ukraine was going to be there forever, I just couldn’t stay away.

But she was right, for sure: Ukraine will indeed be there forever. 

Postscript

I recently read this book:

And this article, by the same writer:  In Ukraine, we are all carrying phantom pain 

‘Another thing that has changed, especially since February 2022, is that the rest of the world has discovered that Ukraine exists. It’s strange to start existing for some just as others are doing their worst to ensure that we cease to do so. However, to keep existing, it’s not enough to have been discovered. You need to constantly remind the world that the life of your country matters and thus needs military, political, and financial support. It needs unwavering international solidarity. Ukrainians have been protecting their right to exist for over nine years (that is, if we don’t count earlier imperialist attempts to swallow this nation up over the centuries). They will never tire of fighting for their lives.’