Irina Lutsenko

This is Part 2 of Olesya Komarova 's guest post about travelling in Britain on a tight budget. It is the second part of a story on how to make your dream trip come at a dream price and not only in your dreams.  In part 1 I told about my Wwoofing experience  and some hidden gems of Somerset, in this part we’ll get across the whole island from the very South to the North. As if amending for the hideous amount of tourists, August in GB repays with warm pleasant weather, becoming the only month for beach season. Yes, they put up tents on the beaches because of the never-ending wind. Yes, the water is bitter cold and you WON’T get used to it. Still, English coastline has some magnificent charm that captures you for good. Stone benches on the cliffs  so that all generations could enjoy the Charm :)  It was supposed to be a direct trip from Bristol to Swanage - a tiny scenic sea-town I learned about by hanging on Airbnb. Then it turned out you need to ma...

Last December I took my fifth international exam in English. “ Why do you take exams? ” is a question I get asked a lot. In this post, I want to answer this question. First, my exam history: 2011 IELTS 8.5 2013 IELTS 8.5 2013 TOEFL 115 2016 IELTS 9 2018 C2 Proficiency A (CPE) So what is this madness for? 1. I want to get an independent assessment of my English. I think my own assessment of my skills is less credible or reliable than an internationally recognized certificate with the C2 English level on it. Additionally, having my level assessed by strangers helps me identify my weaknesses and get a clear picture of what I am good or bad at. 2. I want to see if I can perform under pressure. To be brutally honest, I know my language skills are good even without taking any tests. But I see value in testing myself in high-pressure situations. Many people underperform in exams because of exam nerves. It’s normal. But the way I see it is if I have great language s...

I am thrilled to present a guest post by Olesya Komarova , an avid traveller and English learner. In her post, she shares her experience of travelling in Great Britain and making the most of it on a tight budget.  Somerset This is a story of how to spend 16 days in a country with average salary 10 times higher than yours and get the most of it.  You know this nice motivation-movie scenario: young people tired of wasting best years of their lives one day hit the road to prove the world how free and independent they are. I used to listen to such stories with awe, until I realized - they were not true. First, you can hardly call ‘freedom’ absolute dependence on other people’s benevolence (that is what hitchhiking is actually about). Second, sometimes this benevolence fails (that is when the ‘adventures’ begin). But being stuck on a road in the middle of nowhere having nothing to eat and nowhere to go is not exactly the type of adventures I was looking for...

100 days before the New Year, a friend and a colleague of mine Daria Maslovskaya suggested doing a 100-day challenge. The idea was to do any activity for 100 days for the purpose of building discipline. I agreed. We both went for writing.  The rules were straightforward. We had to write for 20 minutes a day. If we didn’t, we had to make up this time on another day. In this post, I want to share what I learned from my 100-day writing challenge. 1 Time is plentiful. I had the time to write for 20 minutes a day on 90% of days. There were days when I absolutely didn’t have the time but very few. Most of the time I found for writing came out of my lazy time. No important activities were hurt. Takeaway: “I don’t have the time” is an illusion. You do. 2 Inspiration is a stereotype. Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” This is very true. I didn’t feel like writing on most days. I made myself sit down and do it because of the challenge. Howe...