"I have been waiting for my contract for five months. All this time I have been intensively learning the language with Lingoda🤓 I started taking twice as many lessons as I wanted to make sure I am well prepared! Now I will continue my English learning right on the boat, as learning the language is a never ending process💪 ⠀ I believe that knowing a language is directly related to the quality of life. Knowing a language means education, travel, a good job, maybe even moving abroad. Unfortunately, I realised it quite late when I was already 20 years old. I am grateful that at least I learned some English at school, but it wasn't enough. At the same age I realised that I want to see the world, I want to live in different countries and meet different people. I even tried to participate in the Green Card lottery, but without any success. I decided that I can’t let myself move abroad without a proper job or illegally and I was actively looking for ways to change my life dramatically. ⠀ I started to think about what I have in my pocket? Not much: no special savings, no good English either. No risk, no reward, so I started to study the overseas job market. After a long search, I finally found what I was looking for - a company that hires people with tattoos. I realized that this was my chance and I couldn't miss it! ⠀ I had a preliminary interview in English that lasted only 4-5 minutes. After that I was invited to a second interview and based on its results the company will make a decision. I also had to collect a whole folder of documents. ⠀ So, I had the following tasks in front of me: to prepare documents and to pull up English as soon as possible. ⠀ In the next post I will tell you more about the documents and about the interview."

“Hey, everybody!👋 I am writing this message an hour before I fly to meet the boat, so I will be brief! My cruise ship start date was moved from April 16 to June 7 thanks to some delays with the U.S. Consulate🇺🇸 ⠀ So I worked in Moscow until the end of April, successfully passed the medical, received the American transit visa easily, and then went home to Minsk to wait for the date of submission of documents for the Schengen visa. ⠀ I had to get a Schengen transit visa for Spain as I was assigned to join the ship from Barcelona, not from Jamaica as previously planned. But I will still visit Jamaica, only at the end of the cruise🕺 ⠀ After submitting the documents, I waited for 11 working days, paid for the tickets, and planned everything up to the minute when I found out that I was denied a visa due to the lack of an identity document in the application. ⠀ Honestly, it will be exhausting to tell you the whole story (I promise to record a video from the ship), but the visa was approved for me an hour ago! ⠀ All my existing plans collapsed, but quite quickly I made new ones and managed to: ⠀ 1. Purchase everything I need to work on the ship 2. Request, receive and print tickets and further instructions 3. Pack my luggage 4. Eat 5. Find a way to get to Moscow by 7am 6. Say goodbye to everyone 7. Smoke a hookah 8. Meet with my family 9. Get my passport with a visa to Moscow 10. Travel to the airport in 30 mins 11. Start my adventures! ⠀ To follow my news, subscribe to my Instagram @nicholasvasilkov. And make sure you learn, learn and learn English again. It helped me a lot when I called the consulate and spoke personally to my employer to find out about my visa problems. As you can see, I did a great job!👀”

Hello! My name is Kolya, I have been studying with lingoda for only half a year, but during this time I pulled up my English level from A 2.2 to B 1.1, passed all interview levels on a cruise liner for the bartender’s position, started reading books in English, completely demolished the conversational barrier language with foreigners and in general began to discover a new world!⠀ ⠀ The most difficult was for me to overcome the 3 barriers: listening, reading and speaking. In spite of my base, the practice of English through the profession of a bartender, I was not given listening and reading. But I rather quickly pulled them up with the help of cinema and grammar (special thanks to Lingoda, it is usually the most difficult part of learning languages). The grammar, was especially necessary for me when there was a question of promotion to an international company for the position of a bar manager, where, in addition to language, documentation is required.⠀ ⠀ I got to know the lingoda itself through my sister, who was engaged with the school earlier. Having considered the main competitors in terms of the parameters of a native speaker teachers, timing, structure, money, and a schedule, I came to the conclusion that it is better to use lingoda. It’s the best offer on the market nowadays! I will continue to work with Lingoda until I reach the level of 100% proficiency in a foreign language! Also planning to learn Spanish.⠀

Aloha!👋It’s Nicholas again, and today I will tell you about my final interview, in English, with the cruise company. ⠀ Although it was last October, I still remember everything, even the tiny details. For some reason, I wasn’t nervous. I'm good at coping with stressful situations and even more so with stressful situations at interviews. With this in mind I went to the hotel where the interview took place. ⠀ Several people had already gathered in the lobby. I came up and asked if they were also there for the interview. We exchanged a couple of jokes, discussed some issues, such as our level of English (which I could brag about, thanks to Lingoda), and who was interviewing for which position. Other people started arriving, and after 30 minutes we were invited into the conference room. ⠀ We were put in the hall, where we waited another 20 minutes. After that a representative of the company, a cheerful, tanned man in his forties, from Greece, came into the hall. He made a presentation about the company, its history, liners, as well as its reputation. He answered questions, wished everyone good luck and withdrew with our questionnaires. ⠀ “Who wants to go first?” ⠀ -Me! ⠀ Courage had nothing to do with it. I just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Besides, HR remembers the first and last interview the most. ⠀ -“Vasilkov Nikolai!” ⠀ Several people wished me luck. So I went. While I was waiting for Costas (the company representative) to call me, I had time to chat with the agency staff and asked them about everything. A few minutes later I met with Costas. ⠀ Your name is Nikolai? Where are you from? Where do you live now? What is your work experience? What is the maximum capacity for people in the club where you worked? The recipe of a long island? What are the cognacs in Russia? What is the most popular scotch in the world? ⠀ Everything was very fast and, of course, in English. And then: ⠀ The job is yours. ⠀ And it turned out to be so easy! I went out, I spoke to the agency about what to do next and went to rest😴