Goodbye ThaiKrainian Family
About four and a half years ago, I had to let a family I loved and cared about a great deal pass out of my life. I had met Bogdana towards the end of my teaching career on a site where you can speak to native speakers. I was wondering what the next chapter was going to be in my life and thought that would be interesting. Bogdana was a teacher and her specialty was English, although she was an elementary education teacher. We started to speak on the site regularly and then switch to talking on Skype. I got to meet her son that way.
We became very close friends talking regularly. I even helped her put her son in private kindergarten so he could be somewhere while she worked. She was estranged at the time from his father but got back together with him and they married. It was through Bogdana that I started teaching English to Russian speaking people through an online school she started.
Bogdana was one of the people that were there for me when my father died. Bogdana and her husband had a daughter. I was one of the first to know. I visited them twice in Ukraine, the first time also visiting Kiev. I met her family, even attended the high school graduation of her brother. The second time also visiting the Sea of Azov. My visits to them stopped when the political unrest started in Ukraine. The felt and I agreed it would be too dangerous. They moved to Thailand where Bogdana took a job in an English speaking kindergarten. Her two children were students at the school. Until her son started the next year at a bilingual school.
I was invited to visit and did. I stayed with them for a couple weeks then went to Pattaya, Thailand for a week. When I got back I moved to my own apartment because it was too crowded in a two room apartment with five people. It was in Thailand that I started swimming and have since. They had a pool where they stayed that I used almost daily. I was there until their daughter’s birthday and then came back to the US.
The last week or so of my five week visit to Thailand things seemed different. Not when I was just speaking with Bogdana but when it was all of us. My earnings from teaching were given to me when I arrived there. I used that as spending money.
About a month after I returned I got a message saying they were going to send the rest of the money I was owed and that Bogdana was closing the school. I was offered the option of teaching my students privately or stopping. I offered the last four of my students to keep lessons but at no cost. All of them accepted that.
The last time I spoke with Bogdana she asked me to accept the final money the school owed me. I told her it could just stay there until my next visit. She asked me to take the money told me it was going to be okay. She told me she loved me like we usually did at the end of our conversations.
I was blocked the next week from each of the family’s Facebook accounts. I was blocked on Skype and other social media that we used to talk. I never heard why our relationship ended. I had even set aside some money for each of the two kid’s education after high school. Something that both Bogdana and her husband knew about.
I was never able to ask what happened. I have my thoughts on what may have happened but I will never know. I very reluctantly gave up my “ThaiKrainian” family. I did so because I loved them and if you love someone you need to do what is right for them.