A year ago my friend Tata told me that she had long wanted to open her own cafe, and I suggested doing it right on the Garage grounds. I made a sketch on a clipboard to imagine what it would look like. Then the three of us — Tata, me, and another girl, Anya — drew a model on cardboard, cut it out, constructed the café, and named it My Melody, after the character from Hello Kitty. My parents gave us the money to buy the first products, and then we began to earn 4−5 thousand drams a day and with the profit we bought new products. Tata is a professional person; she knows how to make lattes, espresso, cappuccino, mojitos, and different teas. I think she learned that from her parents. She used to be the owner and director of the cafe, but now she’s passed those duties on to me.

Every day I write down our expenses and our income, and see whether we’ve made a profit or a loss. Our business is going well, we have regular customers, we have new ones, and we have an idea to renovate the café: build it out of plywood. I think it’s a good time to do that because the Garage itself also recently moved into new premises.

I like the atmosphere in "Garage": at home after school it’s boring, but here you can socialize, have fun, and waste your energy. And there are no special rules, you can do whatever you want in Garage. The teachers always ask if you want to go to class, and if you say no, they never force you. I love art and acting. Recently Paul, our teacher, and I came up with different skits based on the book Alice in Wonderland and staged them. I was a monkey, a dove, a human, a giraffe. All at once! Cool!

It’s really cool when a child can make their own choices and progress in that direction. My dream is to create a chain of pastry shops. My favorite cake is a sponge cake with cheese cream. I know how to bake it myself.