Job Discussion Forums

[mick_luna]

Any ideas on this? I have lived in Hanoi and Prague, but the latter was inundated with foreigners, forcing up prices and lowering work opps.,while Vietnam is good for work opps. and pay, low cost of living, but very conservative and xenophobic. I'm looking for somewhere friendly, with affordable real estate (like under 20,000 USD) and some means of sustenance (i am a visual artist/freelance writer/journalist and English teacher).Brazil and the Solomon Islands were lovely places, with very nice women (although Brazil is extremely stressful, violent, and still has slavery), but neither place is recommended for someone who has to work.

I am looking at Eastern/central Europe, outside Prague, and Newfoundland. Any other ideas or info would be most welcome.

i'm currently in toronto, which i don't recommend for the individual newbie. been here 3 years and anxious to get out.
cheers
Mick
www.portfolios.com/exotica
www.exotica.freeservers.com

[Khrystene]

[mick_luna]

please limit advice to constructive comments, life is enough of a struggle for many of us without derisory comments meant only to discourage. If you have had such wonderful experiences in Vietnam or Brazil, let me know, maybe i am totally off base. I actually did have some very good experiences in Brazil and Vietnam, which i didn't focus on, because i'm explaining why i couldn't make a life for myself there, and what wasn't a good fit for me.
I don't happen to have a 'home' as you mentioned; that's nice if you have one to go back to.
I take it you are a woman, Khrystene? That certainly makes a difference in your experience, but life is highly subjective, in case you haven't noticed. Each experience is very different, which is a good thing and a bad thing. My two friends, and next door neighbours, in the housing project i grew up in, who were, like me, childrend of single mothers, committed suicide very young. I, on the other hand, am still surviving, trying to carve out a life for myself, no thanks to people like you who would stamp me back into the ground. Life is a subjective experience, please don't judge someone before you've walked a mile in their shoes.

By the way, 'home' isn't safer if you no longer have one, or if you live in a welfare room on the downtown Eastside of Vancouver, the haunt of serial killers and the largest group of drug addicts, alcoholics, lunatics and AIDs infected people in N. America. I no longer live there, thank God. But don't assume things about me or my life that you have no idea about. Thank you

[Khrystene]

[mick_luna]

hmmm, perhaps i should preface every posting with the message "HELPFUL, TOPIC SPECIFIC ADVICE ONLY PLEASE."
If you would like to give specific details, negative and/or positive, of your working/teaching experience in Poland, welcome. If you only want to give some extremely vague, and rather insulting comments about me, whom you seem to feel you know well based on the paragraph i wrote in the original posting, please refrain. I don't claim to know anything about you based on your comment, although it appears that you go out of your way to discourage people in need of information. I suggest you take out your negative feelings somewhere else.

[Khrystene]

[Khrystene]

Almost forgot, be prepared to meet the ugliest foreign tourists, just like in Prague...

[mick_luna]

that is exactly the kind of info i am looking for. it sounds quite similar to the Czech Republic, except for the poverty. I was astounded at the level of apparent affluence in the CR, given the average income and state of the economy in 99 and 2000 when i was there. Compared to the scenes in Canadian cities, it made one wonder which was the developing country. I surmised that this was because: a) there was more family and other social support for the the individual, less tendency to ostracize eccentrics, and thus less risk of disenfranchisement and b)more social context for drinking and/or recreational drug use, such as the pervasive pub culture, quite different from N.America, where lack of social context tends to create a subculture of disenfranchised misfits.

of course, people were working their a**** off to pay for the new cell phones and cars, and their social culture made them more concerned about their social status, and thus willing to work to maintain the trappings of status. they don't have welfare or a large, affluent middle class to feed off of either, as in N.America. I don't think a homeless drunk or drug addict would garner the same pity they might in Canada, although the very oddity of it might spark some alms. I saw a homeless white man in Martinique being given alms by the black populace, although there were certainly locals who were in as bad or worse straits, but wouldn't think of begging.

when i taught in Liberec, i had a student who was a bit of a social misfit, but he was still invited to all of the parties and such that all the other students were. This would rarely happen, if ever, in Canada, at least not in the urban and suburban environments i'm familiar with. The head teacher was English, and made fun of this student openly, but i don't think it garnered him the positive response with the Czech girls he was hoping for. It may be that the N. American passion for individualism, with its attendant ostracization of the misfit or eccentric, may have its roots in English culture.

I really prefer Slavic culture, which is why i am looking for an opportunity of settling somewhere in the region.

[Khrystene]