Dari Demina is a master's student at the Kostanay Regional University named after Akhmet Baitursynov.

My story is actually a little unusual. In the 9th grade, on the day of my last exam, I was flying off with my mother for a vacation. We arrived in Chelyabinsk, and I noticed that she was quite tense. Instead of the usual way home, we were taken to some address. There she said: "Listen, honey, we are not going back to Kazakhstan anymore." I was not even surprised then, I was just used to not asking questions. It's not that I was a downtrodden child, but nevertheless. I spent the whole summer in Russia, getting used to the new surroundings.

And it was quite a sobering experience. Being in a small [Kostanay], it turns out that you only communicate with your classmates, friends. You all know each other, you all grew up together. And here – no friends, no acquaintances, you just find yourself in a situation where you don’t know anything, and people are moving forward and doing it very quickly. And you have to adapt.

There were times when I would just call my grandmother and say, "I don't understand what's going on. Why am I here?" Then the question arose of going to school somewhere. My mother insisted on college, and I made that decision because I wasn't thinking about it then.

The situation was getting worse: I felt like I was not on the same wavelength as the other kids. At college they would say, “Oh, she’s from Kazakhstan,” and they would google any words in Kazakh and ask, “Do you know what that is?” They expected me to be Kazakh, but I wasn’t Kazakh — there are a lot of Russian-speaking people of Slavic appearance living in Kazakhstan. In general, they had a lot of questions, very few answers. And I couldn’t tell them anything. Because I myself didn’t understand why I was here and how I should adapt.

The second problem was money: we used to live very well, and then I only had 100 rubles (about 500 tenge – editor's note ) per day, 50 of which I spent on travel. Mom couldn't give me more, and I couldn't even eat normally with that money: it was very little even at that time. I felt that I was out of step with the other guys who went to cafes and other places. Mom was very worried about this, because to become a lawyer in Russia, you need to re-nostrify your documents, confirm your license. It's a long way.

I had breakdowns: because this is not the life I lived before; because these are strangers; because the mentality is different; because they treat me a little differently than I am used to. At some point, the whole situation reached its peak: my mother realized that she could not stand it, and neither could I. And then, I don’t know how right it was, but we decided to break up. Perhaps, then we lost some trust in each other. I decided to leave, and this was my first adult decision that I do not regret – because I am proud of myself as I have become. If I had stayed with my mother, I probably would have achieved less.

I started earning money by drawing, applied for emancipation and became independent. This decision helped me regain control of my life. At that time, I often visited Russia and felt that something was wrong. However, every time I returned to the Almaty airport, I felt: I am home. In the end, I moved back to Kazakhstan. When I returned, I entered the 11th grade here. I was accepted only to a private school, and I soon graduated.

Then there was the question of going to Russia to enroll, because many people were enrolling in Ufa, Yekaterinburg, and St. Petersburg. I realized that I wanted to stay here, with my grandmother, and ended up enrolling in a local university. After graduating, I decided to stay here. I was in Moscow and lived in Moscow, I didn’t like it, and the same with St. Petersburg: I just felt some kind of pressure and wanted to go home.

I am currently studying for a Master's degree, planning to stay here, and will be a teacher in the future. I don't know if I will be able to get my Kazakh citizenship back anytime soon, since there are several very subtle nuances – when a person moves, they renounce their citizenship in order to get a new one. And I didn't renounce it – my mother did, so I still have to figure that out. Maybe I'll just get married, who knows. I don't plan for such things, but nevertheless.

I imagine my life here because it is understandable and to some extent predictable for me. I know that I am a cool specialist here. I can go to Russia as much as I want, develop myself. But to be honest, I cannot imagine life there. At all. Kazakhstan is my homeland, I love it very much.

Yes, we have problems. Perhaps our problems are even more serious in some areas than in Russia. But I prefer to stay where I really felt home, and where I have always felt it. Perhaps with age everything will change, and I will think differently. Now I want to stay here. I still have a year and a half of master's degree and dissertation defense ahead of me. Let's see how I feel after that.