My English skills aren't good enough for deep communication or fully understanding everyone around me, but they are enough to get the information I need, express my point of view, and so on.

I started learning English in school and later at university. The level of English in our educational institutions leaves much to be desired, which means if you want to know English, you have to study it on your own or with a specialized tutor.

When we started our journey and arrived at the Rome airport, I felt that I had major problems with English. After our flight was delayed for 9 hours, I needed to talk to an airline employee to figure out what was going on. That was the first blow to my English: I didn't understand anything they said, and I couldn't say anything coherent in response.

After that, I started listening to people around me, trying to distinguish words, and it started to click. When we arrived in New York, I had much less trouble understanding what the customs officer was asking me.

The language barrier started to fade significantly after I got into a room at the New Yorker Hotel, where, besides me, there were two Poles and one Bulgarian. It was impossible to communicate with them in any language other than English, so it became an excellent two-day training session for me to start understanding what was being said and trying to speak clearly myself.

After spending two days in New York and arriving at my final destination, New Harbor, I encountered the problem of understanding English from native Americans. As you know, they have a special accent; it feels like they speak as if they want to confuse you or make sure you don't understand anything at all! ))

But after a week, everything worked out with them too, although there might be a couple of people left whose accents I still have to learn to understand =))