Varvara is tall, with a willowy frame. She has long brown hair and freckles dot her cheeks. She has an easy smile, one she sort of leans into. Varvara was raised in Ukraine, she moved to Teaneck about a year ago when Russia invaded Ukraine. Varvara used to live in a now destroyed city near the Russian border. She speaks Ukrainian, Russian, and English. She took English classes after school with other students much older than her. At the time, the classes were very overwhelming, seeing as they gave lots of work. 

I asked about her favorite and least favorite subject. She mentioned science and math as her least favorite. She talked about the struggles of learning math in a foreign language when math could be a language on its own. Now, Varvara is eternally grateful for the large workload and knowledge she gained from her after-school English classes. 

Varvara and I paired up to interview one another. I pulled up a desk and was met with a warm smile. We took a while before choosing our first question. I asked her to use three words to describe herself. The first one she mustered up with a laugh was indecisive. After I met her laugh with mine, I jotted down two more words she mentioned her friends describing her as, kind and communicative. 

We talked more about her friends, she talked about how most of them had been displaced across Europe. She told me how she has grown apart from her friends, how they were unkind to her because she moved to America and seemingly had a better life than them. Her smile fell as she talked about the presence she puts on social media versus how she actually feels. 

We moved into a conversation about her family. Varvara’s parents and older brother live in a Ukrainian community in Brooklyn. She lives with her aunt, uncle, and dog in Teaneck. Varvara got a chihuahua for her 16th birthday, when she was still living in Ukraine. When she escaped to America, she didn’t see her brother, dad, or dog for almost a year. A smile graced her face once again and she expressed her relief at her family being back together.