In a classroom full of excited, hyperactive kids, I sat quietly on an old wooden bench. The day was as shiny as it could be and I remember myself as a shy, non-talkative child who just moved to the area and wasn’t willing to talk to others. The teacher came with a loud and irritating bell which meant the start of the class. Somehow, the mix of the sound and the entirety of the teacher made me feel uncomfortable already and I was sure that I would not like to study here. Thankfully, the woman was so nice to us and even asked me if I need any help for this class or if so come to her after class. She brought some books with a picture of a funny looking man and gave it to me, saying “It’s a book that we will learn how to read”. The book was worn, its pages giving off a smell like decaying wood and soggy autumn leaves. It turned out that the guy on the cover of the book was Oirat Lamaist monk, the founder of the language Zaya Pandita. I smiled, because his first and last name literally sounds in Russian like the words bunny and bandit. The words inside the book were crazy due to their vertical way of writing, strange squiggles and I thought I’ll never learn it, even if my mom will disown me. Just a few days after, at the same class, when I came to the room, I felt a bit nervous because the language that I was supposed to know seemed to be so weird and incomprehensible. The situation got worse when I heard how other students and my new friends were discussing some poem, where they got stuck and proudly showed how they could boldly write their name in Todo Script. I was so confused, we all shared the same nationality and the same age, yet I felt like an outsider, like a white crow. Will I ever have the same talk like them? I felt like it’s not the thing I wanted to study during my childhood. On the other hand, after some time of learning, I started to recognize some patterns in learning and understanding my roots, my history, my family and my surroundings. I started to ask questions about my grandparents, how we got to the point of such a small ethnicity and why we’re located in Russia, but still have our own flag, language and mentality. My mom told me that it’s all about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the War where our descendants were forced to relocate from the origin place, Mongolia. As I dug deeper into my history, I felt as though I was uncovering secret treasures hidden within the language. The letters became more familiar and they no longer felt like my enemies. We started learning how to write simple words, and for the first time, I saw my own name written in Kalmyk. That moment stayed with me because the feeling of writing in a language that looks so different from any auto made me feel proud in the way I hadn’t expected. At first, it was scary and confusing, but I realized that once he puts real effort into learning, the language begins to give something back, not only knowledge, but also a sense of belonging. Later on, I understood that this language is not just something to study in school but a piece of history, my history, History of my family, history of my hometown that connects me to my culture. It also carries stories, traditions and even struggles of the people before me like my grandmother who’s been linked to Siberia and came all along to Elista on her own. That’s why I started to see it as a treasure that needs to be protected. If it disappears a part of who I am will disappear with it. Even as a child, I wanted to avoid it. Now I feel responsible to respect it, use it and maybe one day pass it on. It shaped how I see myself and keeping it alive means keeping part of my identity too.