Transcript

Kaidar Donenbayev:

My previous bike was broken, so I got this bike and I got it from my professor.

And I traded two chocolate bars for this bike and it’s been very nice.

It works.

And I think it’s very worth it for this price.

Hi everyone, my name is Kaidar Donenbayev and I came from Astana, Kazakhstan.

And I study Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine, with minors in mathematics.

When I first came here, I think it was definitely one of the hardest experiences of my life, I would say.

In general, it’s not just hard to adapt to culture, it’s also the language.

It was very hard for me to understand people, it was hard for them to understand me.

And I think it’s normal. It’s normal process when you’re going to a different country.

Honestly, I think everyone should go through this.

I just tried to go to some events and tried to make friends.

The International Students Association helped me a lot.

And they were very friendly, very helpful in the beginning.

And because of that, I decided to become the president of the International Students Association, to help other people, since I also feel how they’re feeling, and I understand that.

For other activities, I play soccer, I play soccer in intramurals.

When I started playing soccer here, I was very surprised that people actually care this much about soccer here.

I thought that no one would play soccer, no one knows about anything about soccer, but there are a lot of people that play soccer, and they’re very good at it.

It’s very interesting for me to play on a team for the first time, in an actual team, not just with some random kids outside.

So I decided to come to Maine. I looked at some, maybe, photos and the description of the state.

I kind of liked it. My family liked it.

The Earth and Climate Science program is very good here, Honors College, and I had a relatively good scholarship.

I do think that it was the right decision, since how much I like Maine.

How much I like the people here.

My freshman year, my professors talked to me and reached out to me about research opportunity.

Even though it was very scary, I decided to try it, and I like it.

We were modeling lectures that used to be in Papua New Guinea 20,000 years ago, trying to understand how big they were and how cold it was at that time.

When you’re thinking about your research, almost every day, it helps you a lot, not just with your research, but to improve in general.

I help with writing a draft for these publications, for these research projects, and it was also very helpful since I became a co-author for both of these works.

For me, it was probably one of the most valuable experiences at UMaine.

I’m glad I did the Honors College, because it made me improve so much in terms of my language skills.

If you would tell me what I’m going to be doing here, like two years ago, when I was still a high school student, I would be very surprised.

In Kazakhstan, there are a lot of ecological problems.

Hopefully, in the future, I can maybe do something to solve these problems in Kazakhstan.

Thanks to UMaine, who gave me this research opportunity.

It’s my second home.