Faces of Ecuador: 033

1. What is your first name: Grigory
2. What city are you from: Vladivostok
3. What country are you from: Russia
4. What do you do: Freelance Translator
5. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and why: Antarctic because it’s completely different from anything I have seen.  I have been to a lot of places but it would offer something unique.
6. What’s your dream and why: To live in Iceland when older next to the highest volcano there.  I’d build a little house at the base of it (it’s dormant by-the-way) and finally be in peace I would think.

FOGG Notes: I met Grigory in Quito, Ecuador at my Spanish school.  He took one month of one-on-one Spanish classes and sad to say he’s 10x better then me at it.  Maybe it’s that he speaks Russian, English, Mandarin and Hindi as well that makes him able to adapt to other languages.  Maybe it’s because he has been to 20+ countries already or maybe it’s that he doesn’t hold back in life and lives for the moment.  I don’t know but for someone who is only 26 years old he’s been living a gravy train life with biscuit wheels.

He travels the world, self financing himself, by doing online translation work from English to Russian.  He started doing this and found that he can travel forever on living off $100 per week, which he can easily make by doing the translations.  He started out by moving to Shehzhen, China for a year while he worked and traveled.  He learned Mandarin there and got to see every part of Asia that one could see.  He said “As long as I can get access to the internet,  I can go anywhere in the world, traveling and working at the same time!”

He has been in Ecuador now for 5 months and after the first month bought a motorcycle.  He works about 20 hours per week translating, then spends the rest of the time riding around the country.  Funny story he told me about the bike was that he just got it back 3 days ago.  I asked him what happened he said “I got really drunk one night and forgot where I parked it.  Woke up the next morning and had everything in my pockets (money, ID exc) and helmet but when I went outside the next day to go somewhere I couldn’t find my bike!  Then I got to thinking about the night before and I really couldn’t remember anything.  I had no clue how I got home and my bike was missing!”

Come to find out, he got so drunk he left it and the police had impounded it.  When he was at the police station the next day filling out the stolen paper work for it, he seen it in the impound-yard and said to the police “Hey that’s my bike amigos!”  Long story short it took him a month to get the bike out of impound (the Ecuadorian police thought he was lying and made him prove ownership) and he went out and a bought chopper motorcycle instead.  Talk about living the good life… makes me wish I was him.  I asked him when he ever planned to go back to Russia and he said “…maybe when I have seen the whole world… but then I doubt that will ever happen!”