Ekaterina Slozina is like any other 19-year-old woman. She enjoys spending time with her friends, she is the president of the student government at Pleasant Valley High School and she ranks in the top 5 percent of her graduating class. And if it were not for her accent, you would never guess that she was born in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Katya, as she likes to be called, arrived in the United States when she was only 9 years old. Her father had been working in the U.S. and traveling back and forth to Russia whenever he could, but the family finally decided to make the move the U.S. Slozina has two younger sisters who were born in America."There are things that I miss about St. Petersburg," Slozina says. "It is a big city and we would walk everywhere, to school, to the store. Sometimes it was a long walk, but you could always walk to what you needed. You can't do that here."Slozina credits her English as a Second Language teacher, Joyce Bresneck, with her being able to assimilate as well as she did."We learned English in Russia," Slozina said with a laugh. "But what we learned was not what is spoken here."Slozina would go to ESL for half days when she arrived at Pleasant Valley."I remember my class going to the library in fifth grade, and I would check out a book and not do anything with it, because I couldn't read it.""Mrs. Bresneck didn't just teach me about school work, she taught me about everything and how to fit in," Slozina said. "If she hadn't explained snow days to me, I would have stood at the bus stop all day, because we didn't have snow days in Russia."Slozina said that she has fond memories of Russia, but does not see herself going back to live there. She will be attending the University of Pittsburgh, main campus, in the fall to study neuroscience and would like to become a doctor some day."I feel that there are more opportunities for me here," she said. "I want to be a doctor and I feel that it would be more credible getting my education here."