I hope you don't mind me calling you Dag it is just easier to type. I mentioned it earlier but you may have missed it the lady with the 9 year old son is a widow. Her husband was killed in a car accident over 1 year ago. I do not know if the parents of the father would object to her leaving the country but I think that if she is his legal guardian it is her call to make.
I guess you go by Izi instead of Dag my mistake. I was away from my computer and had a message ready to send before I realized you responded back about her being a widow. I have been checking air fairs and they drop a lot in December and January. I checked out November $820-$890, December $680-$780, January $710-$790. These were round trip tickets from Dulles Airport in MD to Moscow. I her most guys say they were paying $1000+ the airline was Air France. I just thought you guys might be interested in what I found.
Jim
That is not an issue. To the best of my knowledge it is just the biological father's permision that is needed and only then if they were married. They have a situation where the biological father can adopt his child if the mother agrees. This is without marriage. It is her call. If she refuses he is again out of this picture.
I've resolved that my best strategy is to rent an apartment for a month or so in Ukraine, likely next spring/summer. Maybe I meet up with some ladies from online, maybe not, but theres no substitute to looking in a woman's eyes while talking with her.
Jim, stack the odds in your favor of success as much as possible. Wow girls seem to be wow girls just because of the number of emails they exchange. If you look at their email numbers I think that is what propels them into the wow category. Some of them seem to get that high by contacting a lot of guys.
After having written to ladies who have little English ability and been asked how I am going to help them cope with this, I have come to the conclusion the best odds to real long term success fall with ladies who can speak English to some degree.
As with Izi's suggestion try to find out about the Father and his relationship with the child. The ability of the child to leave the country could be a big issue because the Father does have to agree.
Shark, The lady that I am a little crazy about is very beautiful but she has the most amazing eyes I have ever seen. Even though it is only her picture, I get goose bumps just thinking about looking into her eyes. She has the type of eyes that look into your soul.
Remember these are pictures. Many of which are professionally taken to make these ladies look like models. Expect the actual lady to look different. There was a lady who I really liked her picture. I thought she was perfect. I wrote her a bunch of letters and asked repeatedly for pictures. The first pictures I received were more the profile type pictures. Finally she sent me a recent photo. But it turned out her pictures in her profile must have been at least 5 or more years old and when she sent me a recent photo I compared long and hard to convince myself it was the same person.
Also, take a good look at some of the ladies in the wow category. They are not necessarily all knockouts. They just receive a lot of emails which seems to catapult them into the wow section.
I'm not trying to dump on your love affair, but after going to Russia five times and Ukraine once in the past year and meeting many ladies, my way of looking at these photos is to assume that the girl is not nearly as pretty in real life as she looks in the photo. Of course, there will be exceptions, but I met so many girls who looked absolutely stunning in their photos and in real life they were just average (or even below average), but not stunning.
I spoke with one agency owner about this and he kind of laughed, saying that he took personally took the photos and instructed the girls to be "in perfect condition" when they had their photos, i.e. well-rested, perfect makeup, hair, etc... He spent a long time photographing each girl--sometimes hours--and took hundreds of photos from all different angles. Out of all of that only two or three made it to the agency webpage. Several girls that I met were practically unrecognizable compared to their photos.
I now have a new question to ask potential girls thanks to you guys. I plan to ask any girl I correspond with to send me a picture without makeup on. It may go over like a lead balloon but if I end up waking next to her in the morning I want to know what she looks like without all the primping. I will keep it in mind about their ability to speak English. I have only talked with a couple of the ladies that were below a 6. Most of them are around a 7 or 8.
girls in eastern europe like to use a lot of cosmetics. so asking them to remove it would harm them :-)
yes, most of the girls look more boring the next morning awaking on your side.
from the socalled wow-girls most of come from moldova. personally i know two of them (yes, i am busy in moldova). one looks like original the other one earns her beautieness to the skills of the photographer.
as you should fall in love with them - how you would rate yourself?
without cosmetics of course.
And how good are your russian language skills? couple of girls there speak english - whatīs about your russian language skills?
same quality as theirīs?
Jim, I do not think anyone answered your question about Russian Winters. I personally found them to not be "all that bad." I spent one Christmas in Samara - it was cold (-5F), with a little snow no problem. One Christmas was in Minsk - colder (-10F) . And a few February days in Moscow. Nothing unbearable. Go in the winter - experience the "Russia" we think about. I think you will like it. Oh, I must also tell you I am sweltering in the deep south right now, so the idea of snow 1 or 2 meters . . . actually sounds kinda nice.
About photos; I will agree with VNV - assume the worst. You may be pleasantly surprised. Of course, no matter how many photos you see (professional or not) you may also get off of the plane only to be staring at a baboon face - (guilty). Ah well.
jim,
One young lady i dated from Kyiv was so beautiful in her photo here and when i met her she went from a ten to a five instantly but she was still attractive and fun to be with. The photo man removed her sunken chin and that big bump on her nose .!!!!
I am not sure exactly how to respond to you Worldtravler. I was not rating the girls from 6 to 8 on a scale. Their profile said that their English level was a 6-8. I am actually quite captivated by a girl with and English level of 3. My Russian skills include Rushn to the bathroom and Rushn to get where I am going. My Russian Language skills are non existent at this point. I have purchased a program that I hope will help me learn more but learning Russian is more frustrating than I thought it would be. I wish there were some way to jump-start the side of my brain that controls my language skills. If anyone knows a good program you can purchase that can help learn I would like to know where you got it? If I expect them to learn my language I should return the favor. I also know that all women look better with makeup and beauty is skin deep. I am not only interested in looks but I hope to find beauty both on the outside and on the inside.
jim
If you go to the Rosetta Stone website you can download some sample lessons. Their claim is that under their method you will learn as a child learns. That is not completely accurate as most chidren have parents or siblings that are native speakes to assist, something that is not generaly available in the case of the Russian language. I have however had some sucess with their program.