One of the most challenging problems I’ve had to overcome in my life was my transition between countries. I was born in Russia and moved to London when I was 5 years old. I had a lot of trouble moving because I did not know English well. Before I moved, I studied a little bit to prepare, but I only learned a few of the most common and easy words. When I moved to London, I did not understand most of what my teacher and classmates were telling me. I struggled to communicate. I remember the first day I went to school; I stared at my classmates without talking to them the whole day. The teacher was saying things at me, which I could not understand and found confusing. Imagine coming to your class and staying mute all day long until you go home. That would not be an easy challenge to most. This problem was one of the hardest in my life because it took a long time to overcome. The only way to overcome it was to learn English. Learning a new language is a long, hard task to accomplish. It requires persistence and determination. It took me a very long time to catch up with my peers. I started understanding the language well after about a year of living in the U.K. and caught up in fluency compared to my classmates only after 4 years. When I improved in English, I began to communicate with other people freely and finally started having more friends.