I loved my time in Moscow and with this program. But here are possibly some reasons why:
1. I love traveling.
2. I speak Russian. That really helps. I used Russian all the time even though you don't have to have it for lessons or on the job stuff. It just made things a whole lot easier on me.
3. I was there for 3 months over the summer. I love warm weather and Moscow in the summer was beautiful.
But regardless of those things some other positives are: Russians are very different than Americans culturally, but I have gotten used to the culture and love the difference. I had a decent amount of free time so I was able to find lots of friends, meet lots of beautiful women and really see Russia from Russian eyes. (I'm also very outgoing though, so you gotta be like that to find people.) Also another positive thing is often you can travel away from Moscow with the families or camps you are working for. I heard stories about some of the people before me that went to Europe for a while, etc. with the families they were working with. I went to a city called Gelenzhik for like 2-3 weeks. My hotel room (It actually was quite crappy, which i'm okay with) was like 50M from the sea and I swam in the Black Sea all the time! I was working 2.5 hrs a day in a camp and the rest of the time I was just having fun. Another positive is you can travel if you want. Like I went to St. Petersburg for a week with a friend of mine I made in Russia.
Negatives: Positives seem pretty positive and for me outweighed the negatives, but there are some negatives too. Traveling to lessons takes forever!! Like if you have two 1 hour lessons a day you will need to leave your apartment 1-2 hrs before the lessons starts to make it there in time and the same amount of time to get back (Moscow is huge). If I taught like 2 one hrs lessons a day mostly my entire day was shot. I was on a no more than 25 hrs a week program, yet they don't count travel time as work. So I can work 2 hrs a day but really spend 9 hrs busy that day (and still be way under my hours.) I didn't have too many personal lessons because I was working in camps. (So I would like leave to work at 7 AM and get back at like 3 PM.) I would only be working for like 3-4 hrs though in the camp. So they would want to give me more lessons at night time. That was not cool. I went for free time in Russia, which I didn't have as much as I would have liked. If you don't speak Russian that could also be a negative, I really felt like I used it every day. Another thing is I found Marcus and Vladimir to be very helpful and responsive, but others have said otherwise. For me they were very nice and helpful though.
Suggestions: 1 - This is huge. Go to Moscow coachsurfing.com there are groups of people that meet up all the time and do tons of stuff in English. Its SO easy to hang out with these people, they are all looking for English speaking friends and will want to hang out with you all the time. Its way easy to meet people this way.
Another thing, you gotta be good with kids. I'm really good with kids even though i'm not a teacher or anything and the parents/other teachers LOVED me! I quite enjoyed my time in Moscow. I had a job I could have made probably $15,000 over the summer instead of going to Russia, but I wouldn't trade it for the wonderful experience I had in Moscow.
