That time I lived in Europe

I lived in Europe, for 1 year exactly. I left Columbus, Ohio on August 16 2002 and lived, worked, loved, and got thrown out of a bar for taunting a couple of drunk skinheads in Zilina, Slovakia. I'm rushing ahead, so I'll start at the beginning.

In the Summer of 2002 I was graduating from The Ohio State University. But before graduating, I realized I had no plan after graduation, no job prospects, nothing that stuck out for me career wise. I was basically a ship without a direction. Then one day, I was walking toward class and saw an Ad in the Ohio State newspaper called the Lantern. In the Lantern there was an ad by AIESEC which wanted to send people abroad to study and work. I thought, this would be a great opportunity for me to see the world after I graduate from College.

The country I loved and lived in.

AIESEC found a position for me to teach English in a local private high school in Zilina, Slovakia. It was great, i would work during the week and travel on the weekends. It worked great between me and my roommates. My roommate at the time was from Finland, and his name is Tero Viitala. To this day, i still can't roll my r's. And my other roommate was Ladislav Vargas from Slovakia.  Tero and I would go travelling a lot because even though he is from Europe, he did not travel to many places.  Eventually he would remind me a few times, "Hey Howard, when is your Visa stay end? Let's do a Visa run when we go to Poland, Hungary, or Austria next weekend." There were a few weeks where we're completely exhausted from travelling the previous weekend and we'd look at each other and say "Relaxing Weekend!" It was fun and Tero still is a friend to this day. He's got 3 beautiful daughters and his wife Kata, also an AIESEC'r has a beautiful family in Finland. My other roommate, Ladislav, or Laco as we called him was the guy that got us stuff, movies, movies, and a lot of help communicating things in Slovak was a big help. He now lives in Malaysia and he tried visiting me in Taipei, but the poor guy got lost in the Mountains of Taipei and missed our meeting.  Laco...next time you come to Taipei, bring your phone with you on a hike! Glad you're safe buddy! 

My work was ok, for Slovakia. I'd like to say I enjoyed teaching English, but one of the main reasons I moved to Slovakia was because I wanted to see what it was like living in a different culture, rather than a fusion of Chinese and America culture in America, actually in my little world that was Columbus, Ohio. I wanted to get out of the fish bowl and jump into the ocean so to speak. In my year in Slovakia, I got homesick, quite a few times. But sports like Soccer (Football) and Hockey was what got me through the tough times.

Hockey Got Me through Homesickness.

Hockey got me through a lot of homesickness because this was before Skype and Facebook became big. Myspace was the big man on campus. In any case, hockey was awesome. I knew the rules. Plus before I moved to Slovakia, I was an avid hockey fan. On a side note, when I got to see Bret The Hitman Hart in a wrestling event in Northern Ohio, we chatted about Hockey. How cool was that? Hockey was my mainstay and since the tickets were cheap, I went to regular home games as much as I had time for, which wasn't much.

End of part 1.

Reason why I'm in Taiwan.

The One that I stayed in Taiwan for.

So in one of my other posts in "Making friends in Taiwan", I mentioned that I met my wife through one of the groups mentioned. I actually met her friends at an Oriented event and through a series of fortunate events, the moon and planets aligning and prayer, then I found her. We met at a friends party who was having a house warming party for those of us who played Flag Football. The team got together and the girls I met at the Oriented get together the week before, I called because I really didn't want to hang out with a bunch of dudes for the umpteenth time in a row.

What got me started in finding a girl...it was a team

It wasn't love at first sight. I know people who stare across the room and see that perfect someone and well, that wasn't us. She was sitting beside me and what I noticed most was her black socks. C'mon, there was 10 of us in a room and not enough seats, so some of us had to sit on the floor.  It was a room full of foreigners (White dudes) and me. Also considered a foreigner, but I speak mandarin so they chose me as translator.

The love connection

As the night dragged on, I asked for Gladys' Skype screen name.  I didn't ask for her phone number, because I didn't think I'd end up calling her talking to her.  Little did i know then that it would come back to bite me.

And during the week at work I would Skype with her and chat with her. I got to know more and more about her and that she liked movies and going out. Typical things one would say in a chat. As the week was coming to an end, I asked her out on a date to Warner Village.  Warner Village or now called Vieshow Cinemas was a popular destination for people because there were clubs, restaurants, and a movie cinema nearby. Not to mention shopping until you drop.

Ate too much and couldn't keep eye contact

So the night of the date, My first choice was to go to Chili's. I like their baby back ribs. But the wait time was an hour.  So we walked around for a few mins and came upon Ruby Tuesday.  It says a lot that Ruby Tuesdays was a choice of mine...let alone a second choice. As this date is going along, we're sitting in a high traffic area and lots of people are walking by and I couldn't help but people watch.  Gladys wasn't my main focus, the people walking by were As you can see, the date is starting to get bad.

But wait, this date is far from over, it gets even worse. As we finish the dinner, we decide to go watch a movie. And not just any movie, its the movie that kills young people and uses their essence as Perfume. You guessed it, we watched Perfume a story of a murderer on a first date. It wasn't a bad story, it was a poor peasant kid wanting to perfect his craft and he went about killing innocent women. That was the only fault of the movie and oh yeah this scene got me cringing the most. Only because it was the first date and well, I'll let you see.

 

The scene that could prove worst date ever

When the date was over, it was well past midnight. Usually the MRT (Subway) in Taipei stops service around midnight so we shared a taxi to go home. And folks, this date is going to get worse. The taxi takes us to my apartment first because I lived in Taipei at the time and Gladys lived in Zhonghe.

Suped up Taxi that took me and Gladys home on our first date

The Taxi of course is not any Taxi. Its a Suped up Taxi. I should have known that stepping in a Taxi in front of Neo 19 in the Warner Village area would result in loud music and the driver, driving like a crazy man on the freeway. When we got to my apartment, I looked at Gladys and she looked pretty content with the date, but deep down I knew she was thinking, a few more mins with this guy and he's out. I said bye to Gladys and that I'd call/text her when she got home. 

I wrote down her cell number wrong.

So when I got home, I took a shower and read some emails before going to text Gladys to see if she got home alright from our date. The problem when I went to text her was that I found out that the number wouldn't go through. It would say sending for a while and it would give up. I found out later that I wrote down her number wrong. I was missing one number on her cell phone number. So the whole weekend leading up to Monday, 48+ hours, she thought that I had blown her off. She even told me that what I did was wrong. But there was no way I could have called her because the Skype at my work and my Skype at home were not syncing up at the time. So my savior...Skype. I Skyped her Monday morning and told her that I wrote down her number wrong and that it was all my fault. 

Our second date went much smoother a week later.  That's how our story began. It was rough and sometimes still is rough, but we move on, we communicate and sometimes text each other to say we love each other while we're at work.  Don't worry I have her number right this time.

 All in all, she's the reason I'm here in Taiwan. Plus this kid too.

This kid is why I'm here too!