A few weeks ago I met a very interesting guy named Ilya. When I found out we had to interview someone of a different ethnicity he was the first person I thought of. Ilya is an international student who is from Russia/Kazakhstan.

We began our discussion talking about some of his hobbies. The first thing he said when I asked what his hobbies were he quickly answered playing guitar. I then asked him what type of music he likes to play and it was music I knew! Including sweet child of mine, and you and me by life house. Ilya then explained his passion for cars, and even told me he worked at an auto body shop back in Kazakhstan. Another passion of his was snowboarding; he has been snowboarding for 8 years. I have also snowboarded for 5 years so that was something we had in common. Another one of his hobbies is cooking; he said cooking seafood is his favorite, and eating seafood is one of my favorite things to do.

Some interests Ilya has include photography when he travels, which I also enjoy. I then told him how I lived in Germany for a few years and he found that interesting. Ilya also told me about his dream to wing suit one day and that his favorite type of car is a BMW. Another one of his interests in dancing, you can always find him dancing. I also enjoy dancing. Ilya also plans to major in petroleum and natural gas engineering.

When I asked him about his culture he just kept saying how different it was from the American culture. He had a hard time explaining and said the only way you could actually know is if you went there. He finally explained to me that he is an orthodox Christian but most people in Kazakhstan are Muslim. He then said he doesn’t celebrate Christmas and that new years was the most popular holiday. He was very excited to find out Americans celebrate new years also.

Ilya often described his friends as “brothers” and said how much closer friends are there than here. He said here if he would take a snack from a friend’s room, the person would get mad; but in Russia he could go to his friend’s house and eat everything and his friend would say nothing to him. He also stated in his home country if you go somewhere with people, you would leave that place with the same people; you would never just leave a “brother”. I think once he makes better friends, and stronger bonds with people, he will find out that people here treat their friends like family too. He also said the people here are a lot more cautious of who they trust. But on the other hand, he said people here are more outgoing and easy to talk to.

I then was curious about why Ilya chose to come to Penn State. He explained to me that here in America we have everything in our hands, and that he wanted the same opportunities. He also wanted to have all 4 seasons like he does in Russia so Pennsylvania was an ideal place. The next reason I found very interesting was that Penn State does not have a lot of Russians. He then explained that he doesn’t want to speak Russian, and that in his country everyone is required to learn English starting in 1^st grade. He also told me he doesn’t want to speak Russian because then he will start thinking in Russian. Once he starts thinking in Russian it takes him a long time to get his brain back to thinking in English. This was very interesting to me because I never thought about how you think in a language. His major was also a deciding factor; Penn State has a great engineering program and he wants to be a petroleum and natural gas engineer. I then asked him if people here treat him differently, and he replied by saying that many people are super nice to him and want to get to know more about him; but other people don’t know exactly how to act around him. He added that he hates when people assume he’s like Borat and will get really mad if someone starts quoting the movie.

I then started to question him about Kazakhstan itself. He said he believes everyone must learn English there because “dollars run the world.” Then he explained to me that 1 dollar=35 ruble, which is the Russian currency. He also told me that women in his country aren’t treated the same as women in the U.S., he said in his country, women are not treated as equal to men. Another difference he said is the huge money gap. He then explained to me that his town is split into rich and poor, with 3 streets in-between the two. Luckily though, he told me he lives on the wealthier side. I asked him about high school experience and he told me that his graduating class was 15! I thought my class of 65 was small. He also explained to me that they only go to school for 11 years, so he had a year off between high school and moving into Penn State.

Lastly, I asked Ilya what the hardest thing about living in America was; he told me it was the communication. Not really the words themselves, but like how people interpret his words. I thought it was kind of funny when I first met up with him, he asked, “how long are you?” and I started to giggle, and he immediately corrected himself. Then when I did answer him, using the U.S. standard system, and when he used his phone to convert the answer to metric he then understood. He also said how much he dislikes American food, he said it is very good but so unhealthy for you.

Talking to Ilya was one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had in a while. It made me really appreciate being an American and having the freedoms that we do, but also made me want to visit Russia to see all these differences myself. It’s absolutely incredible that I can also find similarities between someone from the other side of the planet and myself. I’m glad to say I’ve made a new friend in Ilya.