I Got Fired in a Foreign Country

What’s it like to get fired in a foreign country?

Let’s get real for a post. I’ll tell you all about it.

Short answer: Mildly terrifying. Utterly liberating.

Long answer: Depending on your figurative pain tolerance, you might be dismayed, disgruntled, worried, or outright terrified at first, but then comes the feeling of being in a place where you can start with a completely blank slate, with all the challenges and benefits that come with that.

In a single word? Enlightening.

Before we get started, check out my YouTube channel for my more unscripted shenanigans.

Going on…

I got fired in a foreign country in 2024.

Last year, I accepted a job offer to teach English as a foreign language on-site in Costa Rica.

I quit my better-paying, 100% remote customer service job in favor of moving down to a foreign country where I could barely speak two intelligible words together, in order to teach English to a bunch of businessmen and what I anticipated would be a group of bratty teenagers.

(I exaggerate, but you get the general gist of it.)

The businessmen were really congenial, and the teenagers ended up being a bunch of well-behaved sweethearts.

I came…

I taught…

…And then I got fired.

Without any warning at all.

What happened next?

The next 3 hours consisted of frantically combing through the local job boards and submitting applications on LinkedIn and other websites, and that was when the terror sank in, and I spent the next 1 and a half hours calling my mom and dad in tears of utter dejection, rage, and despair. And after about 4 and a half hours of utter disbelief and shock, well…

…that was when my initial despair, dejection, and terror finally faded.

I took a deep breath.

Decided to call it a day.

Binged on chocolate and Netflix.

FUS-RO-DAHed my way through a few dungeons on Skyrim.

I gave myself 24 hours to mope and grieve the illusion of security and routine that I had created in my mind. (No more, or else I’d mope and grieve forever.)

And that calmed me down like nothing else did.

“You’re a Jakle!” my dad had exclaimed at me when I had been whining at him that morning about the unfairness of it all. “You moved down to freaking Costa Rica all by yourself. Show some grit!”

(Not his exact wording, but close.)

And that was when I came to the realization that he was right.

I could, in fact, handle this.

I was a Jakle.

I was my father’s daughter. I was my mother’s daughter.

I could freaking do this.

(Also not my exact wording, but close.)

I’d been so stuck, so mired in my old ways of thinking and existing and surviving that I’d momentarily forgotten the fact that I had moved to an entirely foreign country, all by myself, and had been living in a place where I didn’t speak much of the local language or have hardly any grasp on the local culture. And I’d done it all on my own.

For almost 5 freaking months.

Was that terror still there? Yes. Absolutely.

But that deep breath, that opportunity to let myself feel and process the negative emotions, and more importantly, that time limit, gave me the moment I needed to gather myself, analyze exactly what I needed to earn in order to be able to afford to live here, and start strategizing on how to make it work.

Within 3 days, I applied to and was accepted for a freelancing job through LinkedIn, where I would get paid an average of $20.80 per task completed for researching and writing responses for AI queries so that the machine could learn from my natural language. Although the prices would vary by the task, it was a start. It was income. And I could do it as often or as seldom as I needed or wanted, and I could do it 100% remotely, too.

Looking toward the future.

Today, there are even more options available to me, too.

I’m still not completely fluent in Spanish. I may never be completely fluent.

But I’ve learned that I’m stronger, more resourceful, and more resilient than I ever thought I could be, and even though I’m not making the kind of money I want to be making, I finally feel like I’m on the right track toward getting there.

Who knows what role I’ll fill next?

Tour guide in Puntarenas? Medical translation in a local hospital? Maybe making lattes at a local coffee dive?

For the first time in a while, I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.