u/Any_Percentage_6629

Sharing this story because I know other women would understand. There’s a historian that I have been going steady with for a little under a year. He’s a professor and researcher with an overwhelming amount of information about him and his work online. Most of which are around race studies and working with indigenous people. We go on small trips around the city while he does his professional work but last week he invited me to come with him to the rural indigenous communities, a 5 hour drive outside the city. It was a last minute invite.

My position is that I live alone in a foreign country, away from my family but I traveled a lot and have a lot of experience solo traveling. I agreed and joined him. We spent the day driving around and visiting sites and he’s telling me about the history of them. Then it became dark and we needed to find a place to stay. We’re in Latin America and my Spanish is intermediate. When he asked a native where the nearest stay was, the native said 33km away and stated the name of the next settlement. We started driving, I’m looking at the road signs and the clock; there’s no light, no network service and we were driving at 100km per hour for about 30 minutes. By my calculations, we should’ve arrived. We passed a few settlements and I stopped seeing signs that would lead to the area that the native told us about.

Then the conversation about the illegal stuff that we did came up. We both do humanitarian work and sometimes we bend the rules and break laws and policies to make things happen. He has an accent so I heard him say, “I help to traffic girls” and my heart dropped. What did you just say?!? My heart dropped to my ass and I start thinking strategy. But I stayed calm on the outside, kept my demeanor and responded, “omg tell me more” then he said he accepted money to carry drugs across state lines. The ‘drugs’ was marijiana — it’s illegal in this country.

Anyways, I’m writing this from my bedroom. We didn’t find the settlement that the native told us about but we did find a town a few km further and we stayed at the hotel. He also did visit the communities and carried his research as he said he would. But that one misunderstanding scared the living shit out of me, I can’t stop thinking about it. I was also holding his phone and legal documents when I heard what I heard.

Earlier this week I had an experience with my landlord that left a sour taste in my mouth. 25F Last year I moved to Brasil. I moved from a poor third world country with the goal of having a better life: affordable food and stability. I found a one bedroom apartment that was renting for 950rs. A bit expensive but it was a great location and very safe and pretty good space. The only quirk of the apartment was the leaking roof. It leaked badly in several places and I’d have to move my bed in the middle of the night if it rained. I spoke to the landlord about it and she sent someone to fix the roof for a total of 3-4 times. They fixed the roof but only one annoying leak above my bed remains.

My lease ended in May and though I was annoyed with the leaking roof, I wasn’t in a mental or financial position to move so I asked to renew the lease. The agreement was that I’ll accept the leak since it still wasn’t fixed after the repairs. We agreed to go to the office to renew and were conversing about the renewal at least a month in advance. Then when we got to the office, sitting at the desk, she tells me that the renewal cost is 150rs added to the current rent but she’ll give me a discount and will only increase by 60rs. My rent is now 1010rs. I immediately got on the phone with my lawyer. My lawyer said that it’s a contract and it’s legal and I have a right to say no. But my back was against the wall at that point. That was my last day on the lease. If I had said no, I’d have to find a new place, pack and move immediately. The new contract also added on a late payment penalty of 250rs per day after the agreed payment day. That made me feel disappointed because I have never been late during the entire year. The rent was due on the 1st and I’d pay on the 25-29th of the previous month.

I know that all of this is legal and well within right but the way it was done leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I don’t feel comfortable staying in this apartment for another duration. All of this could have been communicated to me before we went to the office, instead she chose to tell me all of this information at the last possible minute.

Gringa here with a work from home job. I’m in a smaller city in the north and because of my job, I don’t get to go out and socialize much so my Portuguese is terrible. I tried volunteering at the animal shelter but I showed up twice and nobody answered the phone. I also tried the hostels but they had nothing available for me. I’m thinking about getting a small side job so I can be around local speakers for a few hours a week but don’t have to heavily rely on the language skill to do the job. Something like washing dishes or packing supplies…

I’m from a small country of less than 1 million people. And there’s been a lot of limitations with credit card and receiving payments because of my country being blacklisted due to corruption. I turned to freelancing because it’s the only way I could easily move to a new country while having income. I tried fiver, behance, contra over the years and have never landed a client. All of my clients are from my tiny country but the economy is changing. My clients from my home country are feeling the squeeze from the economy and I’m getting less work. Yesterday a client told me that this will be my last month working with them, leaving me with one major paying client. If I lose this client, I’m cooked. I’ve been sending hundreds of applications and cold emails to prevent the worst case but have gotten nothing but rejections and no responses. I’ve tried Glassdoor, Indeed and LinkedIn. I don’t know what else to do. I’m being vulnerable right now. I have 7+ years of experience and a full portfolio website for graphic design and web development jobs. I need advice for what else to do.