Full labor semester

Mid-October becomes the beginning of the school year for an increasing number of Russian students, and it is not connected with the reform of higher education, but with the growing popularity of the Work and Travel program, thanks to which they have the opportunity to work in the United States, getting a coinage $ 7 per hour. Many this opportunity is so much so much that they extend their "workers" vacation for a whole month, risking to be expelled from universities. With the last wave of students from behind the ocean arrived and Maya Huseynov, who experienced all the infancy of student work abroad.

Participate

Work and Travel (Work and Travel) – A call-spell, which every summer it definitely breaks down tens of thousands of students around the world and carries them to the boundless American labor market.

Become a member of the Work and Travel program is easy, you need to be a student of the day branch not the last course of the highest educational institution (for the American embassy is the key to the fact that a person will return to his country at the end of the program) and have $ 2300. Of these, $ 1800 goes to design work visas, invitations to work, as well as medical insurance and air tickets, the remaining $ 500 should eat transportation costs and housing to obtain the first salary.

The design of documents begins in September and is conducted by special agencies that have received an American license to implement Work and Travel. These agencies are mandatory intermediaries between the American government and foreigners, for which the lion’s share of funds spent on the program. Moreover, most of the agencies require the total amount already in September, although the air tickets, the summer value of which is about $ 800, will get out only in spring. Thus, large agencies, annually sending several thousand students to a new light, receive a serious interest-free loan for up to eight months from them.

The only opportunity to reduce the program – to find an employer independently and get an invitation to work. This will help save about $ 200 and, with a lot of probability, a bunch of time, since upon arrival in the US, it turns out that most of the invitations to work provided by the agencies – fictitious, and you still have to look for work yourself.

Work

The endless ocean finally stayed behind – after nine o’clock in the airspace, our plane was shouted by wheels about the Western hemisphere in the face of the famous airport named J. Kennedy.

"I really like students from Russia and Eastern Europe, "says Tina, a souvenir shop manager in a small town Virginia Beach on the east coast.- They are hardworking and do not bend any work, probably because they needed to beat off".

Indeed, most students come to work in the United States for busy money, so they do not have to grow nose, especially since many people leave much to be desired. Students ride mainly in tourist cities – in the summer season there is a lot of need for cheap labor. Traditional deployment places of student labor communities – Resorts on the East and West Coast.

Eastern states of Virginia and North Carolina are the greatest popularity. From New York and Washington, where most Moscow flights come to these states can be reached by buses "Gray Hound" or "Peter Pan" – It will take $ 60-80 and about a day. Florida and California are not so accessible – you will need "interior" A ticket, the price of which comes to $ 300-400.

Every student arriving in the states in the pocket lies several hundred dollars, they must be managed to rent housing and live at least two weeks before the first earnings. The task is extremely nontrivial, given that work, and housing, as a rule, should be signed independently. As a result, most students live in apartments that are surreated for a summer period by distilled locals, more often – recent immigrants, which after receiving the cherished "Green card" With merciless greediness are made to new arriving young compatriots.

They pay students on average for $ 75-100 a week behind Koycometto, and even just for the mattress on the floor without bed linen in overcrowded rooms with interpretations. In such conditions in America contained, we must think only slaves Africans. As for prices, they lead to perplexity of even local residents who complain of high taxes and high cost of utilities. Taxes by the way "Business" No one pays that local authorities closes their eyes. As already mentioned, on visits here traditionally earn newly new citizens of America. They know that they know that in someone else’s country for a person experiencing a shortage of money and time, the delay of death is like – his corner need to find as soon as possible, so that it is easy to ride in search of work, otherwise the money taken with them can just not be enough. However, in the eyes of young adventure crafes, such extreme gives the Work and Travel Additional Charm, this is a kind of challenge, the rite of entry into adult life. The benefit that those parents who gave rise to a round sum for organizing a labor semester in America for their children do not imagine what conditions they send them.

Virginia Beach – a small town on the Atlantic coast with a compact cottage building and a variece of hotels in the style of Soviet architecture Times of Khrushchev. Local residents – about half a million, so with the arrival of summer the town becomes the center of the attraction of migrant workers. Works here, of course, a lot, however, because of the influx of students, hourly pay every year decreases.

"The salary in the city became such a meager that you have to work for two or three jobs or constantly take overtime hours – complains of 60-year-old Ellis, a female pizzeria on Atlantic Avenue.- And life is even more expensive, the country is fighting".

Payment of the hardest and dirty work on the coast is barely reaching $ 8 per hour – it’s lucky. The average rate is $ 6-7, so earnings of students for the 40-hour working week is about $ 240-280. If you work overtime, i.e. more than 40 hours a week, then hourly pay increases one and a half times. But students are happy and such an earnings, especially since many to compare nothing to: for them is the first experience, the first experience of truly independent life, which attracts no less in the program than the opportunity to earn and see America.

Students work at least in two works, only so you can return the money cast for participating in the program, and even bring the amount of a couple of thousand "Green". The range of activities is varied: washing public toilets, cleaning of rooms in hotels, delivery of pizza, work in the kitchen in the catering (by the way, it is not necessary to get on the kitchen, no medical references are needed, so the campaign to the American public catering may have a consequence visit to the doctor).

All work is honored for happiness. Every day, students from all over the Soviet space rise with the dawn of the Sun and cheerfully walk on the first job, then on the second, and some are also working at night in 24-hour supermarkets. Involuntarily comes to the idea that if they showed the same zeal in their own countries, probably, they would not have to spend big money for the opportunity to work for the benefit of the American economy. But the situation obliges – despite the satiety and prosperity of the American society, it is obsessed with the work, the second in the prevalence of the disease in the United States, after obesity, – workolism.

"America is a labor colony with enhanced nutrition",- Victor laughs, Russian musician, who has passed over 14 years of hard labor in the United States, the path from the session to the owner of the record studio with half a million turnover.

Everything is working, starting with children and ending with the elderly, who persistently do not want to leave on peace, despite the good pension provision. Many Americans dream to die at work as Spartans on the battlefield. The work replaces a personal life, sometimes even a family, the American life line has to work, to the festival in the United States referred to contempt.

Another feature of American society is emphasized by the privileged position of weak and wounded, to which children, animals, disabled, women and African Americans. Their rights are defended especially zealously and carefully. The most amazing situation with the black population, the African Americans are forgiven everything, even natural taciousness, as a result of which most of them, according to white taxpayers, live on public benefits, without even thinking to strain themselves with work than disturbing the holy of holy American lifestyles.

"My ancestors were slaves and hugged on the White All Life, "says, playing with powerful breast muscles, thirty-year-old Verzil John, who has been registered on the labor exchange for ten years.- Let them work white on us!" The bedding part of the population belongs to African Americans with caution, speaks of them not otherwise as a whisper – God forbid, blames in racism, they will be fattening or just beat, you can expect.

The attitude towards animals is no less dampy. For cruel treatment, they can plant for bars. A lot of shelters for homeless dogs and cats are open throughout the country, and you can only buy them for big money.

18-year-old Erica worries in the summer, selling souvenirs on the beach, including declared embryo sharks in glass jars. "If tourists will ask, a true shark, – teaches newcomers experienced Eric, – say that the real one, otherwise they do not buy, but add it right there that she was born dead, otherwise they will begin to scream: "You do not have to trade this, killing children – inhuman!"

Travel

First Monday of September – Labor Day, Big American Holiday, It marks the end of summer, vacation and vacations. Many resort establishments are closed, many reduce staff. With the beginning of the working year in the States finish the season of student part-time. America changes the Hawaiian shoes on the jackets, and foreign students who worked on the Work and Travel program, it’s time to go to open your America to "Gray hounds" (so translates the name of the bus company "Gray Hound", working throughout the United States). The benefit that the whole infrastructure is in stock.

The easiest and most affordable way of movement on the states – bus. Practically in every American city, no matter how small it, there are bus stations, between settlements chasing flight buses of solid-caliber companies. This system resembles postal mines in Tsarist Russia. To get there, let’s say, from Virginia Beach to New York, you get on the bus to the nearest station, then to another who is lucky to the next transit point, and so with several transfers finally get to the destination. The convenience of this system is that buses, as a rule, transport passengers for relatively short distances, and you get the opportunity to get acquainted in detail with America. Passengers have the right to choose the time of departure, that is, you can go away in any transshipment point, take a walk around the city, and then continue the journey. If a more passenger flight accumulated more than fit on the bus, the company usually submits an additional.

As for living, then you can easily find suggestions for student pocket. In addition to respectable "Hilton" and "Park Khayatov", where the minimum cost of the room raises for $ 250, there are many student hostels in the states, which are usually quite close to the city center and are something like youth hostels – with rooms for several people, televisions, telephones, internet, kitchen and other amenities. Here you can get acquainted with students from all over the world, find a suitable journey company, just useful to communicate, exchange impressions. Price accommodation in such a commune – up to $ 40 per day.

However, Russian speech sounds not often. For several months of staying in a new world, most Russian students are penetrated by American values, and from enthusiastic romantics, flew ocean to wander across the expanses "American", turn in short-circuited pragmatists. Thus, the formula "Work and travel" Loses its magical strength, and the other becomes relevant: "Work and buy a laptop or two suitcase". Or rather – "Work in America, learn from Russia", Since, according to statistics from the agencies sending students to the labor semester in the United States, the absolute majority of the participants of the Work and Travel program will go to the States from year to year, and in the homeland almost none of them do not work in parallel.