To be known as a "Christian", wasn't always a good thing in Ukraine, especially when the people you are dealing with, are atheists. The day started out nothing different from any other weekday in school.
Today everyone was to bring money for the "home classroom" to be repainted. A few students including me did not bring the money. The teacher asked each one of us why we didn't. When she asked me, I said that we (meaning-our family) didn't have the money. The teacher was outraged, she yelled, "You liar, you wear clothes no worse then any of your peers, you have the money to go to the musical school, but now you "don't have the money". Pray to your God and may be he"ll send it to you from heaven!" I was so embarrassed and insulted that I wanted to simply disappear or melt away. At that time, my father was home, sick with colon cancer, my mom was not working, because she looked after my father, and the government didn't give us any money either. The only way to survive was to get deeper and deeper in debt.
In attempt to defend myself, I tried to explain to her, that the clothes I was wearing were not bought, they were given to us by our church, and I didn't go to the regular musical school, the school I went to was a musical school within a college, what we paid for tuition there was just one tenth of what we would've paid in a regular school" But she didn't seem to care about anything I said. I knew that, because it wasn't the first time she"d picked on me, just because I am Christian. I was the only student who got yelled at for not bringing the money, although I wasn't the only one who didn't bring the money because of the bad financial situation in the family. .
That and some other incidents with that teacher, taught me a lifelong lesson. That lesson was,-"Never ever stereotype people". Many times people are "labeled" for what they believe in, or what they wear, or even how they look. The fact that I wore clothes no worse then any one else didn't mean that our family could afford it.