I was born in Russia in 1989. It was the only world I knew. When I turned 6 my parents told me the next day we would be moving to ...

draw-my-life-coming-to-america

Draw My Life - Coming To America

a lot of you may not know this but I actually was born in Russia don't nobody understand the words that are coming out of your mouth man be a whoop I'm a young 5-year-old boy in Russia and my parents tell me that in a couple weeks we're about to move to the United States I can't even comprehend what that means when you're 56 your world is like this big my world was preschool home maybe the ice cream store my parents tell me we're moving to America gave me no information about why we're doing it how long we're doing it for they told me I'm not allowed to tell anybody cuz it was a secret I had no idea why this was I thought they were playing a game with me actually we had only 24 hours of notice to our closest closest friends to say that we were in fact leaving later on I've come to realize that we came to the United States on a refugee status Visa I guess it would say like that was our governmental status we came here to have a better life for our family for my sister Etc I vividly remember the flight because it was my first time being on an airplane I was extremely excited also didn't speak English my parents didn't speak English but my sister did so she was like ordering drinks for everybody even though all she was saying was Coke Pepsi I was like okay that's not really you don't get credit for knowing how to say brand names and I remember the flight attendant was so kind to me that she gave me like this little Delta pin that I was like oh my God in America they give pins for free I don't have to pay you for this I didn't know if it was a trick as a kid you're like new land new people don't know what's going on I'm not going to trust anybody but once we landed I remember my uncle Uncle coming to the airport he gave me like a gift of like Hot Wheels cars and in Russia like we didn't have anything I'm talking like I might have one color picture of me growing up there was no fancy technology there was no toys like a good birthday present was markers and little did I know markers dry out if you leave them in direct sunlight and I left it inside of a car and I literally was crying because I had no more markers that was my birthday present and our cars by the way were terrible in Russia there's like a company called juli it was like like if you think whatever car you have now is bad take like a sledgehammer to the rims to the windows okay maybe not that bad but abuse it for 20 years and that's our brand new version of our car and then we took the the car right over to Brooklyn where we were going to live and it was during Christmas time it was like early December that we came so there was lights everywhere and I was like oh my God there's lights there's like holiday spirit it's so beautiful looking back at it now like a random neighborhood in like Bay Ridge Brooklyn that I'm looking at now and I'm like okay it just looks fine our apartment was only a one-bedroom apartment for my dad my mom my sister and me our parents bedroom was the living room the bedroom was cut in half for me and my sister and the kitchen served as like the little kitchen table that we ate at with four people as well as a computer because we needed a computer for my mom to be able to do some work and for my dad to go to medical school for the second time in his life in his 40s in a new language so this apartment was a disaster the only thing that was great about it actually was that it had an enormously long hallway me and my dad ended up getting like a plastic ball and playing soccer in that hallway like kicking the ball back and forth to see who could score and the more bounces you got across the walls the easier it was to score cuz it was hard to judge where it was going to go that was Good Times by the way this housing is like welfare housing essentially it was like rent controlled I'm pretty sure it was like $400 a month when we first moved in maybe even $300 a month cockroaches Galore mice Galore I was definitely afraid of these mice cuz my mom was afraid so I emulated her fear you could hear the mice running around at night when we would watch television so I came to the states and I didn't go to school right away we were were planning on sending me to school I think right after the new year so I came in the middle of first grade going into school when you don't speak the language teachers asking you questions right away right they want to get to know you she asked me a question I say one of the three words I know I said yes she bought it she comes in asks me another question I say the second word that I know no she buys it she asked me another follow-up question I say maybe now she realizes this dude does not speak English I need to find a translator luckily there was two girls in my class twins Rita and Rosa who spoke Russian and English and they translated they understood where like I could hang my jacket I was obviously very stressed out coming to a new school meeting new people I cried the first day and the second day and the third day when our parents came to pick us up my mom came the teacher grabbed my mom and was telling her like your son is crying a lot I want to make sure he's okay this and that my mom has no idea what she's saying cuz my mom doesn't speak any English yet cry sad they're using words sign language like anything they can essentially show to each other that I'm upset and they want me to feel better blah blah blah we figure it out the one thing I didn't struggle with even in first grade when I first came over was math because my mom was a math teacher and in Russia they're like you better know everything there is to know about math as a six-year-old I had the knowledge of like a third grader of math so math was super easy and I could sort of Coast on the math component and try really hard on the English and everything else that I was terrible at and I remember like going to ESL and then my grandparents picking me up from school and then telling my grandma like I learned a new word today she like what'd you learn I was like hot air balloon she's like what is that I'm like oh it's a thing that flies in the air my grandpa actually and my grandma religiously picked me up from school from grades 1 to 3 after that they said you're old enough to cut it in New York City good luck as a 9-year-old and we started walking home as a 9-year-old luckily I lived like one to two blocks away from school so it was a very short route for me I had some close friends growing up some were Russian some were not they all lived in the same vicinity usually in the same building we played handball a lot that was like the number one sport goto and then as I started becoming more interested in American culture I got really into basketball and watching like Michael Jordan and the Bulls play so I would watch it with my dad and then my dad took me and got me this it's like a children's Ball but it had the Bulls logo on it like I treasured it it was trash though like a piece of rubber like bounced too much and when you threw it against the rim it bounced like 50 yards back but then when I went to go play with the regular kids who've been playing basketball their whole lives and they played with the real basketball I was terrible cuz I was like getting used to playing with a 5in ball and now I'm playing with like a legit Siz 29 and 1/2 in ball so that was sort of my childhood initially coming over as an immigrant a lot of kids teased you that was kind of the norm when you came from from another country I don't know why it never made me that upset I think it was because our class was so diverse and so mixed that it seemed like everyone was getting made fun of for something that just happened to be my thing something that also helped I started doing taekwon do when I was younger my parents saved up enough money to literally pay the tuition of the Taekwondo school that was the max that they could do they were like okay you have one after school activity it's Taekwondo we want you to do that we want you to be in good shape an activity that I had with my dad to do a little father unbonding when he had time at night was to go onto the street called 86 Street in Bayridge Brooklyn that had a lot of stores on it and plan out some of the stuff we hop to buy when we had some money one of the stores that we used to go to was called nobody beats the whz nobody beats the whz and it was an electronic store that sold boom boxes televisions they had like open box sales whatever it was basically like the Best Buy of today but it wasn't as nice we were never able to afford anything there except once we we did buy an open box boom box meaning someone bought it returned it and it was still open so we took it and it was like 200 bucks and it was like the biggest purchase we ever had other stores on that Journey that we used to go to that I love 99 Cent Store our best friend I'm talking we bought everything at the 99 cent store oh pizza was less than a dollar a slice and like Sal's pizzer in Brooklyn was the top for me Brooklyn Pizza nothing tops it sorry Chicago wherever else people think that there's good pizza the cheap 75 cent slice that looks like it has oil like artificially splurged all over it delicious oh the number one shoe store that like I had all my shoes from Payless boom loved Payless if it wasn't for Payless I would never have new shoes as you could tell it was a lot of stores where it was uh humbling but it's only humbling looking back now because back then I thought P shoes was a dope brand there's so many more options than what we had in Russia so like what you have here and you may think is bad could be way better than what we have in other countries and I think that's sometimes lost in the messaging of my social media content people think like he's successful that means he was always successful or he probably comes from from a wealthy family that's furthest from the truth I had a great family very supportive family who worked very hard educated in two countries there's a lot of work put into that there was a lot of times where we were on the bottom bottom bottom and in order to get to where we are today we had to put in a lot of work and I want you to not lose sight of that because I think the beauty of where we live here in the United States is that opportunity is available for you you have to be smart you have to make some wise choices and you may mess up and you may have setbacks but if you keep working at it I really think America is the best place for increased opportunities I mentioned my sister earlier well here's a full video with me and my sister to see how well she knows me watch it it's a blast she just basically roasts me the whole time as always stay happy and healthy I'll see you on this video though

Dr.

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