Soko Battsend "Egg on the edge"

Soko Battsend

                                                                Egg on the edge

I'm the youngest child in my family and a daddy's little girl. I never had a hard time doing difficult jobs or being by myself while being far away from my family. Like an egg on the edge, everyone always cared about me. Living in America was my first big trip and a big step forward in my life. I was eager to see how I’ll change and open my eyes to the new world after a year. I really wanted to build new exciting experiences in the United States like meeting new people and learning a new culture. However, I still had some fears such as being misunderstood, encountering a language barrier and culture differences, which have created certain challenges.

August 20, 2011, was the day of my departure and the start of my new independent life. It was a cloudy and rainy day in Ulaanbaatar. It seemed like my homeland crying because I'm leaving.  As I headed down the runway, I will never forget all my loved ones, family, and friends that came to see me off at the airport. They wished me the best and watched me fly away. The next day I was in the U.S., in the town of Salem, Oregon after long and adventurous flight. I noticed right away how this new environment was so different from my home:  hot weather, different looking people, and no familiar faces to me.  The plan was that I was going to meet this young couple with two children who seemed friendly. They were my new family. The first question they asked me was how do you pronounce your name? I replied, "My nickname is Soko!" After that, they asked me many questions, but I found that I had to listen intently to understand what they were saying, and I often had difficult finding the right words to answer them. For example, one time as we were eating a diner, my host-mom asked me to pass a pork and I passed the fork. Already I felt exhausted and embarrassed.

However, when school began the first couple weeks of school were alright. I was uneasy that I did not know anyone and had no friends initially and really kept to myself and was quiet. Back in Mongolia I'm known to be super loud and active girl, who has a lot of friends and participates in everything. My senior year in the U.S. I did not feel like quite myself. All those memories made me sad. I lost my confident and felt useless. By that time I started to miss my friends and family and spent a lot of time in front of the computer chatting with them.

One day I said to myself, "You did not come here just to sit in front of the computer!" Something clicked in my head and I started looking for some after-school programs or clubs. I soon found teachers auditioning for a musical "White Christmas." I tried out for a part in the musical, and thankfully I was accepted. I was so happy about it and everyday practice helped me to make more and more friends. They were so friendly, talented, crazy and funny guys. I can now say that I had wonderful, fulfilling year filled with a lot of excitement and wonderful experiences. Unfortunately, good always comes with bad. I realized living in America and getting better in English made me forget my Russian and Mongolian. When I talked on the phone with my family I noticed that I couldn't talk as well as I used to before. I would forget some words and think for a second or just take a lot of pauses in my talk.

Even though after all this I will never regret that I went away to the United States for my senior year. America opened my eyes to the real life. Even though I was somewhat shaky in my understanding of English and was a lot quieter at first because of it, I still wanted the experience of getting to know another culture and was determined to break through the language barrier. I'm so happy that I decided to crack my shell and open up to everyone. Only after that I had great experiences and memories to bring back home with me. I think in order to get something you need to sacrifice something. There is not anything free in this World. Once again, I proved to myself that nothing is impossible, if you want something badly.