49 Voices: Onya Enkhbat of Unalaska

This week we’re hearing from Purevdulam “Onya” Enkhbat. She recently graduated from Unalaska High School where she was valedictorian.

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ENKHBAT: I came from Mongolia about three years ago as a sophomore here. I was thinking that it would probably be colder and when I think of Alaska, I just think of dog mushing and ice. But when I get here in Unalaska it was so different. There were no caribous or bears.

Just for homeworks I had to sit for like 5 to 6 hours at least to translate all my textbooks and homeworks and try to understand my lectures from my teachers and everything.

I actually learned English since I was in 4^th grade, I believe. But it was not good at all. I was not fluent. I could not like understand what people were saying. I could not read a lot of book except 3^rd or 4^th grade [level] books.

When I was in Mongolia I was not a reader at all. I did not read books for fun.

My stepmother took me to the public library and handed me some books to try and when I opened the books I just could not understand any of that. And it was just not fun for me to try and read all of them, but one book caught my eye and it was the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. When I opened the first page of the book it warned me to stop reading if I thought I was a half-blood. And I didn’t know what half-blood meant so I was like, if you’re going to warn me to stop reading, I’m just going to keep reading.

I’m going back to my home country Mongolia and I’m going to be there for the whole summer and I’m going to come back in August and go to college at UAA.

I honestly feel like I’ll miss Alaska when I go to Mongolia which is kind of ironic because I probably would have never thought I would miss some other country other than my home country.