One night, I was sitting there sending out resume after resume. I got a response from a potential employer, and I was so excited. A long correspondence started; he replied very quickly and used "chat" slang. He even tried to flirt. O_O! I was in shock.

He even called my landline. That call made me feel a whirlwind of emotions, from sheer terror (my hands were shaking, my heart was pounding, and when the phone rang, I looked at it like it was a traitor!) to pride in my English (though if it weren't for TV shows in English, I wouldn't have understood a damn thing). It was around midnight in Minsk, and I was home alone.

And then a situation happened that just didn't fit into the normal life of an ordinary family. My dad came home (mind you, it was midnight), walked into the kitchen, and there I was, sitting there talking in English. My dad's eyes went wide! I barely managed to push him out the door.

The first shock: his daughter, whom he never monitored, never forced to study anything, and had never heard a single English word from, actually understood something and was even answering back! )

It turns out he thought I(!) was calling America, and he had already started calculating in his head how much I had spent on the call.

As it turned out later, this employer was scamming students. Sigh, and I had already started dreaming. And all my motivation to look for a job just vanished.