моя авто-bio...без intermediate английского читать придется со словарем. сюда кидаю - просто как крошечный кусочек моего двадцатилетнего "я"...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I’m four years old. We: my parents and I – just moved from Tashkent, a capital, a center of our small Central Asian world, to a small town, Chirchik. We got a one-room apartment, no utilities. It’s the time of the Perestroyka, the collapse of the Soviet Union – no bread, no milk, no meat in the markets, no clothes in the malls. My mother is pregnant with my sister. She and my Dad just graduated from the Polytechnical University. We’re in our only room, where I’m sitting on the only chair, for other furniture we have just a hanger. Instead of a table there is a suitcase covered with a paper; there is an iron teapot on it, two cups, one lepyoshka (national Uzbek bread), and a piece of smuggled sausage that my Dad bought for much money for us that time – one third of his student monthly allowance. I feel very happy because I am sitting on the chair like a little princess, and I am in a new “city” which I don't know, and where - I am sure - I will find a lot of friends to play with.
I'm six years old, the first day of Saturday prep school. I am very proud, I go to study, I have an extremely cute pink backpack, eleven markers, and green and yellow exercise books - my Dad bought them for me in Russia. I am in an absolutely white blouse, and short black skirt, and tiny little shoes – beautiful but so uncomfortable! My feet hurt but that makes me actually even more happy: I feel like an adult – I have problems of adults like nice but hurting shoes. We were both waiting for those Saturdays. Ivan would bring dark chocolate and cookies for me, and I was sharing my books with him. During breaks between classes we were always holding each other's hands, and Ivan would tell me he was going to protect me like a Knight of Light from everybody who would have wanted to hurt me. He was also helping me on the arithmetic exams, and refused to hold any other girl's hand while standing in line. Our romance lasted for seven months. In May Ivan left forever for Greece. He just didn't show up one Saturday, and when I asked our teacher where he was, she told me indifferently: “Ivan's parents finally took him back home from his Grandma.” I cried for him for several weeks, unable to forget him until I went to middle school. I was trying to imagine how we would meet again in twenty years when I would be tall and beautiful, he would meet me accidentally, and he would recognize me once he looked into my eyes. I was way too sentimental at the age of six. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I'm ten years old. I recently had two surgeries done on my hand . Six months earlier I had cut my hand while was bringing a plate to the kitchen. I fell, the plate broke, and I cut my hand on a piece of the plate. I cut the tendon; as a result, my ring finger could not move. It was like a puppet. After the first surgery it became even worse. I couldn't straighten it – it was stiff. So, I got the second surgery. My heart stopped beating for several minutes during the surgery: too much anesthesia for 10-year-old girl's heart. My Mom never told me that until I turned the age of seventeen. She didn't want me to know for a long time that I had to be really careful with my health because my heart became too weak and she wanted me to avoid any kind of stress. My mother's main concern still is whether I eat three times a day, get eight hours of sleep, and don't worry about academics and “all this stuff... like guys and love, and dates. It's not worth it, darling.” Of course, I always tell her that I feel perfect, eat five times a day, sleep ten hours a day, and have no interests except my classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I'm eleven years old. I am taking guitar classes. It's my Mom's idea for me to get over being self-conscious about my hand , and also, a way of exercising to make my hands stronger and fingers more flexible. My first attempts to play these strings are like baby's first steps: scary, careful – and in my case, very painful. I am trying really hard to play the guitar, but I realize I hate it already in the first three months: my phalanges bleed, the finger hurts, and I can't stretch my fingers to play even the simplest chords. Besides, my teacher, an old alcoholic ex-professional guitarist, is annoyed: not only he doesn't like girls, he especially dislikes “ugly little palms”. He slaps my hands – with a wooden stick, stretches my fingers so strongly that I almost cry, and makes me play the same stuff over and over again. I never complained on Victor Vasilyevich – because this method of teaching was common in the Soviet and post-Soviet education system. I endured seven years of musical torture so as not to disappoint my mother, but I don't know what force in the world could make me take up the guitar in my hands again. " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I'm fourteen years old. I got accepted into the physico-mathematical class; I am scared – I am afraid I might not be smart enough to study in this program. my Mom is worrying – of course, about my sleeping hours. My Dad is extremely proud of me and looks like a jacobin; his daughter is not as stupid as all other girls. She is good at math and physics – according to my Dad, the only two subjects that actually teach you anything. He graduated from a Polytechnical Institute as one of the most brilliant students there. So, to have a daughter who did not know math and physics would be the worst news for him. My life of a physico-mathematical nerd was hard, but interesting. Every week I had six hours of physics and seven hours of math. My main memory for long three years – from the eighth grade until the tenth – is of an infinite number of problems to be solved: mechanics and thermodynamics, quantum and nuclear physics, plane and solid geometry, trigonometry, calculus. Although I was doing my best to solve everything I was assigned, it finally turned out that I was not a math genius, and even less of a physics genius . It was a hard blow to my Dad. I guess that for some time he couldn't forgive me that fault of my mind, although he never told me that. I was reading it in his look, and felt so depressed and ashamed about that. I was working really hard to become smart. But I couldn't do anything when – instead of solving a problem – I was writing verses in my textbooks and notes. They were just coming to my mind, and I could never stop them. It was as if somebody was telling me them. It is still like this, although I continued with my math direction, and now double-major in corporate finance management and mathematics. My Dad is absolutely happy, since I keep my GPA okay while spending my nights writing novels and poems that nobody needs, having a white sheet of an open Word document as my best friend, and waking up sometimes at night just because I saw a really nice phrase in my dreams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I'm seventeen years old. I have been accepted to Tashkent International School, a private school accredited in the United States, with American curriculum, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs. I am in shock: all the subjects are taught in English, and most of times I have no idea what the teachers are talking about. I never had a chance to study English before, and moreover, the English I did study was British which is drastically different from the American: grammar, syntax, pronunciation – sometimes it sounded like two different dialects. The hardest subject is Advanced Placement United States History. Mr. Johnson, the teacher, is a Texan and my mind honestly refuses to understand his swallowed vowels and indescribably transformed consonants. He loves to talk, but I barely make any sense out of what he is telling us. He makes lots of jokes but I am sitting there like a complete alien. I am reading the textbook assigned, but I have to translate almost every single word into Russian. After the first semester things become easier. By the end of the school year I am even able to take Advanced Placement English Language and Composition and get “four” for it. This is my first victory in the infinite fight with English, trying to make myself speak and write it better than lots and lots of native English speakers. I am still struggling with it, and I have no idea if there will be a day when I can express my thoughts in English as well as I do it in Russian, but I hope I can do it.
I'm twenty years old. And I honestly don't know what to write about the present me. © Copyright: Живущая На Земле, 2009.
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