I have memorised a few hundreds of words and know some basic verbs and grammar, but I still can't really speak any Russian :(
So I discovered italki.com, a site where you can find teachers for online lessons (through Skype or Google Hangouts) and a community of people from around the globe. You don't have to hire a teacher, actually you can just find someone who speaks the language you are trying to learn and in return speak your own native language with people who are trying to learn it in an "exchange" model.
Sounds like a great concept! I'm not very confident with even very basic Russian conversations, so I decided to do some speaking lessons first, before I go into such an arrangement.
There is a torrent of people teaching the "primary" languages on the site, and I must have spent about 2 hours of looking through profiles before I could find a handful that I was happy with and that had convenient schedules. Time difference is important - some people live in China, some in Kazakstan, some in the Caribbean...
HOW TO CHOOSE???
I arranged an introductory 30min session with 3 different tutors for just around £10 (or 100 ITC in the site's credit system) which sounds like a good price. Let's see how this works out :)