Sunlight poked through lace curtains and fell on a plate full of penne vodka. A dish of apple slices was next to the pasta and Alex Gutor sat hunched over the meal, stabbing at the penne and shoveling it into his mouth, before sipping apple juice from a tall glass to wash it down.

His mother, Iryna Dolgikh, prepared the pasta, the rest of which was still sitting in a large pot on the oven. Gutor refilled the plate three times. He was full, satisfied by his mother's cooking.

It was almost like old times for Gutor -- almost. Except now, mother and son are in the middle of Pennsylvania.

Gutor is a junior outside hitter on the Penn State men's volleyball team. Dolgikh is the women's fencing coach at Cornell University. She was down from Ithaca, N.Y., visiting him, as she does once or twice a month. As she sat next to him at the small kitchen table, they intermittently spoke Russian to each other. When she spoke English, it was with a noticeably thick Russian accent.

The only difference from the scene, as compared to times of the past, is the location. The common theme, though, is family.

Gutor grew up in Kiev, Ukraine, before sporadically moving around Eastern Europe through his middle and early high school years. He came to America as a high school sophomore and, after graduation, found himself in State College.

The first of Gutor's moves came when he was 2 years old and was forced from his native Ukraine because of one of the best-known disasters in the world's history: Chernobyl.

Chernobyl, a nuclear power plant located about 80 miles north of Kiev, suffered a meltdown on April 26, 1986. The meltdown, however, wasn't publicized. In fact, the Ukrainian government didn't tell the public until a few days afterward.

Luckily, a friend in the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency comparable to the CIA, tipped off Gutor's father, Sasha Gutor, about the catastrophe. Upon learning the news, he shipped the family off to Russia, Dolgikh's native country.

From Russia, Gutor turned into a vagabond of sorts, as he and the family moved back to Ukraine, then to Hungary, then back to Ukraine, then to Slovakia and again back to Ukraine.

***

Volleyball, in the beginning, wasn't Gutor's main sport. From ages 6-12, he was a budding tennis star and was brought up around other sports. Dolgikh, who was an assistant fencing coach at Penn State for three seasons before leaving after last year to coach Cornell, was a world champion in women's fencing in 1976 and World Cup champion in 1977. Dolgikh was set to go to the Olympics, she said, but was snubbed from receiving the nod, due to politics surrounding the sport.

But, of all sports, Gutor found himself around volleyball most often. His father -- who currently coaches the Mount Olive College (N.C.) men's volleyball team -- was a professional volleyball player and coach in Eastern Europe.

"When he was coach, I was the little kid running around with the volleyball," Gutor said. "I would come to his matches and be a ball boy. A few years later, I just picked it up naturally."

Going into ninth grade, he decided to focus on volleyball and enrolled at an athletic school that draws from a pool of Ukraine's best athletes. There he practiced twice a day and attended classes in between for six days a week. Gutor made strides as a volleyball player at the academy, but not immediately.

He struggled at first because the level of competition he played was much higher than what he was used to. It wasn't until his coach at the academy challenged him that Gutor began to blossom.

He wanted to be an outside hitter but wasn't good enough, as many of the players at the school represented the Ukrainian junior nation team. He was told he was too short and that he couldn't jump, so he became a utility player.

"That's how I got the volleyball I.Q. and experienced every position," Gutor said. "And, within maybe half a year, I got better then I was before. I could compete with them and hang on their level."

The following summer, at age 15, Gutor would play beach volleyball for about eight hours nearly every day. Playing beach volleyball helped him hone his skills at every position, too, because two players needed to cover the court. He now cites the summer as a big transition for him, as he developed into a complete volleyball player. It also didn't hurt that he grew about eight inches that summer.

With a newfound skill level and height, Gutor soon took the simple enjoyment of playing beach volleyball to a competitive level. He and his beach volleyball partner began to play in and win junior tournaments, as they traveled across Ukraine competing.

The ability Gutor developed in his time at the academy and on the sand courts is still apparent when he takes to the gym in Rec Hall.

"He definitely has a lot of talent, just all-around," senior co-captain Nate Meerstein said. "Obviously if you watch him play, his arm is one of the most powerful arms I've seen when it comes to playing volleyball. I don't know how he snaps it so quick. [But the time he spent playing in the Ukraine] definitely helped his volleyball I.Q."

Before long, though, the summer of fun playing beach volleyball came to an abrupt halt.

" 'We're leaving. We're going to go to America in two weeks,' " Gutor recalled his father saying when he came to pick him up after a beach volleyball competition.

He was stunned.

***

"I was carried away with the volleyball and the beach volleyball, having fun growing up with my peers," Gutor said of his time that summer in Ukraine. "Since we moved so much I got used to changing the place we lived every two to three years, but America is not Slovakia that's right next to Ukraine. It's on the other side of the world."

It turned out that the move that originally seemed daunting wasn't so bad after all.

"There were a lot of new things," Sasha Gutor recalled. "A beautiful country where everybody smiled. It was a little different."

The family moved to Texas, and Gutor enrolled at Greenhill School in Dallas at the beginning of his sophomore year. Greenhill is one of only about a handful of schools in Texas that offer men's volleyball, plus it is solid academically, Gutor said, so deciding to attend was natural. At Greenhill, Gutor enjoyed success on the court and in 2003 was named Texas High School Player of the Year. Coming out of high school he was also a "Fab 50" selection by Volleyball Magazine.

But getting accommodated to American culture, while embraced by Gutor, did not always come easily. Especially when it came to breaking the language barrier -- he could speak a minimal amount of English but was baffled when faced with slang terms like, "What's up?"

After getting used to life in America and enjoying high school success, Gutor once again packed up and left, this time descending upon Happy Valley. He was first noticed in person by Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik as a high school junior during a club volleyball tournament.

"We just saw this guy with good size and a great arm and he stood out amongst [his teammates]," Pavlik said. "And at the same time, we were told by Emmanuil Kaidanov, [Penn State's] fencing coach, that here was a kid whose mother was a fencing coach who played volleyball in Texas. So we kinda knew of him and then we got to see him. That was it -- watching Alex play at the net and attack the net was really what jumped out at you when he was a junior in high school."

Gutor is a supply-chain and information systems major, so his choice to attend Penn State was based largely on academics, since it has one of the best supply-chain programs in the country. He joined his sister, Ellen, now 22, at Penn State. She played volleyball at St. John's (N.Y.) before transferring to Penn State as a junior to finish her collegiate career.

In the beginning, it was just another move for Gutor. He once again dealt with meeting new faces and accommodating to a different way of life, though two friendly faces at Penn State helped smooth the transition.

"The only people that I knew here were my mom and my sister and, I guess, [the coaches]," Gutor said. "[But] when I meet people, I'm really interested because everyone's unique, everybody comes from a different place. Everybody brings something different."

Gutor remembers his first couple of weeks on campus as a lanky freshman, only able to bench-press 65 pounds. He has since bulked up his body and his ability both in the classroom and on the court.

As a freshman, Gutor was named EIVA Newcomer of the Year and second-team All-EIVA. As a sophomore, he was again named second-team All-EIVA and finished third on the team in kills.

Next year, when he's three years past his days as a scrawny freshman and about to graduate, his time as a volleyball player might just be beginning. He plans on trying to play professional volleyball in Europe, before pursuing a career in business.

***

Gutor lives in an off-campus apartment by himself, past Wal-Mart, through a trailer park and tucked in a little woodsy alcove, far removed from the loud, drunken nightlife at Beaver Canyon.

"It has its advantages," Gutor said. "It's really quiet out here."

Though he likes the tranquility of off-campus living during the week, he admittedly indulges in "the-stereotypical-European-guy" activities once the weekend rolls around, and goes clubbing or out with friends.

He spends a lot of time with his teammates in the training gym, in the weight room and sometimes during the weekend, but also has a group of international friends he has formed bonds with. Sometimes, he runs down to the Eastern European Market to get Russian food with them.

Though he shares his time with others from Eastern Europe, the people who understand him best are his family members -- they've been with him through his travels from country to country.

"It was tough [growing up]," Gutor said. "I didn't really get to have that many really, really close friends."

"I think [playing on the Penn State men's volleyball team] was Alex's first real experience with a group saying, 'We're here, we want you in with us.' And I think that showed," Pavlik said. "He's real independent, with his dad coaching down in North Carolina and mom up at Cornell ... it's just a way of life for him."

So, Gutor relies on his family as a base. And it's evident when looking around his apartment. Sitting next to his computer is a framed picture of him and his sister. He also has a picture stand that's stuffed with a few family photos: one of his grandmother, one of his mother when she was younger, one of his father, one of his sister.

A lot of other things from his youth are scattered around his place, too. He has every pair of volleyball sneakers he has worn since high school. He keeps two volleyballs that he used when playing beach volleyball during summers on a sofa in the living room. He also has a Ukrainian flag draped over his bathroom door.

"It reminds me, it shows the history, brings memories," Gutor said. "I'm more of a person that puts meaning behind the things. Like shoes, they remind me of high school fun and that kind of stuff."

Upstairs, a door sandwiched in between his refrigerator and kitchen table leads to a little deck. On the deck are a few chairs that face out, looking past the property. Woods line his backyard and, sometimes, when the trees are full and green, he sits out there. It clears his head, he said, and helps him relax.

Perhaps he spends his time on the deck thinking about friends he's left behind and the new friends he's made. Perhaps he thinks about the places he's been. And, perhaps, sometimes he thinks about where he might be headed.