“The craziest thing I’ve ever done is getting out of the Ukraine. I am Ukrainian and I get scholarship here. I started all this process of transferring here from another country without telling my parents. It was like, ‘Hey mom, I’m going to the States for a couple of months.’ So it was kind of shocking for her. I was not scared about loneliness or missing my parents, for me it was easy; but [it was hard ] telling to my parents and understanding what they will feel. My mom, grandpa and grandma are all people of the Soviet Union. It is a little bit ‘closed world’ for them, to understand that someone is wanting to get out and leave for a couple months or years, it is scary. For them, this is like unknown territory; but for me it is cool.”
Artemii Orekhov
Freshman
Ukraine
Photo by: Marissa Pilcher
