Former foreign exchange student returns

 

Last updated 9/3/2014 at 4:11pm

--Photo for The Record by Terrie Schmidt- Crosby

Back row: former Odessa foreign exchange student Mirgul Omurzakova and her husband Annuar Sabantayev. Front row: Their children Aliaskar, 5, Aldiyar, 10, and Amelie, 8.

Mirgul Omurzakova spent the 1994-1995 academic year in Odessa attending Odessa High School and living with Ken and Bev Scherr. After spending her final year of secondary school in Odessa, she moved on to Colorado for college, then to Brown University in Rhode Island where she finished her degree. After that she returned to her native land.

Although Omuzakova is an ethnic Kirghiz, she lives and works in Kazakhstan, where she is the managing director of Capital Partners, a real estate development company. Several shopping malls and four Mariott hotels are among the properties that she manages.

After she returned home from college, she met the man who would become her husband, Anuar Sabantayev, a native Kazakh. The couple now has four children: Aldiyar 10 years old, Amelie 8, Aliaskar 5 and Aydan 18 months. The three older children accompanied their parents on their trip to America, while the baby stayed behind with family members.

Two good friends from her high school years were Jessica Kagele and Jeff Jantz. Kagele invited Omurzakova and her family to visit her organic farm near Odessa. Jantz currently lives on the other side of the state, so his parents, Ron and Julie Jantz, visited with Omurzakova in his stead.

Besides her host family, the Scherrs, Omurzakova told The Record she was pleased to have been able to visit with Dr. Duane Pitts, whose English class was a favorite of hers in 1994-95. She also had fond memories of a photography class with Dick Green, whose illness prevented more than a phone chat. She was also saddened to hear of the recent death of Carl Ryan, who had also been a teacher she looked up to.

Omurzakova had been urging the Scherrs to visit her in Kazakhstan, but health issues made such an arduous trip difficult for them. So she decided that if they could not come to visit her, she sould just go visit them and take her family along.

In celebrating the 20th anniversary of her first trip abroad, Omurzakova also worked with the Scherrs to set up two merit-based scholarships, one to go to a graduating Odessa senior and one to go to a Kazakh senior. For her, it is a way to ‘give back’ and to thank her American host family for the warmth and security they provided for her during her stay as a student. She says she was also impressed with the community spirit and volunteerism that sparked the preparations for the Deutsches Fest shortly after she arrived in the U.S. in 1994. She wanted to thank the community and her hosts for the positive experiences she had back then and give other young people an opportunity to have similar experiences.

Omurzakova’s oldest two children are quite fluent in English, as she and her husband have tried to raise them to be bi-linqual in Russian and English. They also speak some Kazakh. Five-year-old Aliaskar is just beginning to learn English, but it likely won’t be long before he is as fluent as his brother and sister.

The family spent Tuesday of this week visisting the Odessa school of which their mother has such fond memories. Just prior to arriving in Odessa, the family had been to San Francisco, where they saw many famous sights. For the children, however, those sights were far less interesting than meeting the Odessa people their mother has called her “second family.” They said they wished they had spent less time in San Francisco so they could have had more time in Odessa. Eat your heart out, San Fran!

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 

Our Family of Publications Includes:

Cheney Free Press
Ritzville Adams County Journal
Whitman County Gazette
Odessa Record
Franklin Connection
Davenport Times
Spokane Valley News Herald
Colfax Daily Bulletin

Powered by ROAR Online Publication Software from Lions Light Corporation
© Copyright 2024