Lambert is home to a diverse student body with a wide range of backgrounds, including first-generation immigrants from Asia, Europe and South America.
Gleb Bogomazov is one such international student at Lambert. A junior this year, Gleb and his family emigrated from Belarus over one year ago due to ongoing economic and electoral issues within the country.
“When I was 16 years old, I came to Georgia’s airport with my family,” Gleb said. “I understood that all my previous mistakes, achievements, experiences, all my past time that I spent, it was only the beginning.”
Gleb enjoys spending his free time meeting new people, achieving new personal bests at the gym and singing in a Slavic singer-accordion duo with Zachary Davis, a member of the Lambert Wind Ensemble.
“He [Zachary] plays accordion and I sing,” Gleb said. “I don’t know why he picked me up, probably to make himself look better because I make a lot of mistakes, and I’m not an experienced singer.”
Gleb’s foreign background and unique character has made him quite popular at Lambert High School. It’s a daily occurrence for Gleb to have numerous people approach him spontaneously and start chatting, regardless of whether he knows them or not.
“Everybody was interested,” Gleb said. “‘What a nice accent! Are you from Russia? Are you from Italy?’I think it’s just my interesting personality and background that makes them come closer to me like bees to a flower.”
In addition to his cultural background, Gleb’s signature sense of fashion has garnered him some distinctive attention. Gleb likes to dress in casual suit jackets, khaki pants and a woven trilby hat.
”I just like to dress like that,” Gleb said. “I think it looks stylish and actually really solid in my opinion. For example, right now I’m wearing a nice suit, but sometimes I wear my blue suit, sometimes I wear my other jackets, sometimes I come in full black colors.”
Unfortunately, Gleb does not possess a green card, preventing him from getting a job or obtaining a driver’s license. This is a stark contrast between him and other high schoolers his age.
“We are on our way to create a green card,” Gleb said. “It’s really unfortunate that I cannot apply for a job because honestly I think it would be a pretty nice experience. I just want to work like a typical citizen of the United States.”
As Gleb becomes more accustomed to American life and culture, a growing gap emerges between his old life in Belarus and his new life in America. “I sometimes want to visit my grandfathers, grandmothers, talk to them, hug them, spend some time, but I live a much better life in the United States.”
For Gleb, life is a constant journey of learning new things about himself and the world around him. He values his past experiences as an integral part to shaping the person he is today and would not trade anything for it.
“As my mom taught: ‘We are who we are,’” Gleb said. “It means that our background, our past, our mistakes or our achievements made us us.”
“How people like to talk in my country, ‘You live a life, you learn a life,’ you always learn — it never stops,” Gleb said. “No matter what you do, no matter where you are, you are always learning something.”
