Additional info: "My father was a photojournalist and my mother was an
educational researcher. My sister Victoria was born when I
was 7. Although there was this gap between us, we were always
extremely close growing up. As a child, I was introduced to
ballet and piano, and drawing lessons. I loved to draw palm
trees and coconuts during those cold long Russian winters,
dreaming of one day visiting the tropical islands. We spent
half of every summer in one of the resorts on the Black Sea
(our parents saved all year long to be able to afford to take
us there). The other half of the summer we spent in our
grandma's village . There, my sister and I learned the rustic
ways - milking a cow, climbing trees, sleeping in a hay,
riding a horse, jumping in the river from rocks in the middle
of the night and other wild and carefree experiences.
Through my school years, I was very athletic, doing track and
field (mostly in the sprints - 60,100,200 m.). After I
graduated high school in 1983, I wanted to study archeology
at the prestigious Ukrainian University; but I was rejected
because my parents were not communists (they did not belong
to the Party). So I worked as a secretary in tourist
organization that took children on various camping.trips. At
about the same time I became interested in body building,
which at that time wasn't fully legal in the USSR. I was also
accepted in theater school and graduated in 1989 from college
with a theater degree.
That was the time when Gorbachev came to power and allowed
free enterprise for the first time in 70 years. I was hired
to work as a manager for a start-up private company and made
so much more than my friends working for the state. Shortly
thereafter, my now famous sister Victoria (at that time a
little rebellious teenager) left for the US as the first
Ukrainian exchange student to study in the US. She was only
16 and we all missed her terribly. She got married and stayed
in the US; and my Mom moved to the US shortly thereafter.
After trying to get a visa for about 2 years (it was tough
for an attractive and single Soviet women to obtain visas to
the US) and living in Moscow, I came to America at the end of
Oct. 1992.
I flew to Phillly where my sis and mom met me at the airport.
It was such an emotional moment for me. Everything was
completely new for me here. I barely spoke English. I began
modeling with my sister and learning the American ways. I now
work as a manager in a clothing store. Being in America with
my family is a wonderful dream come true. On occasion, I get
to go to the tropical islands of my childhood fantasies,and
now I even have an island of my own! So, welcome to my very
own, wild and uninhibited island!" Yours, Tatiana
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