THE BIG REVEAL. How I've changed after three months of living in the U.S.

Ninety days may not be much when you had the same job for a while now, lived in the same country most of your life and had a somehow familiar routine, but it sure feels a lot when you are a newbie immigrant.  

One the other hand, I can barely remember all that happened since we got here. If someone would download from our brains that one file called “American memories”, I’m sure it would turned out to be a time-lapse video: plane arrives at O’Hare Airport, we rent an apartment, buy a car; mesmerize at the beauty of Downtown, cry on the couch because we can’t get a job, do a happy dance seeing our blog growing; smile while watching a Redbox movie and drinking a beer after a day of work.

But living here for such a short period of time changed us in unexpected ways.

We thought about this the other day, when my husband, who was in charge with doing the dishes, noticed how quickly he adapted to the U.S. style sink faucets. There’s a level of comfort in this back and forth movement, he said, instead of rotating the taps, as we did back in Romania. His comment had a snow-ball effect on my imagination and I started to make a mental list of habits we borrowed from Americans.

Apparently, there’s a litany of things we now do differently:

1. We brush our teeth like it’s going out of style. It’s either that or paying a small fortune for a cavity.
2. We expect someone to put our groceries in a bag and we assume that all doors automatically open. We got lazy. Not long ago, I was standing like a statue in front of JJ Peppers for a couple of seconds, waiting for the doors to open, while two people just pushed them and walked in. 
3. It became second nature for me to leave an hour earlier for work, because you never know for sure if your app matches the reality. I’m starting to believe there’s a Bermuda Triangle of CTA buses. While waiting for the bus I: twitted, read, sang, cried, ate, lost my Ventra card, met interesting people. 
4. We gear up for winter like never before. Having a solid winter coat, a pair of warm gloves and some blizzard waterproof boots it’s possibly more important for a Chicago resident that owning the latest iPhone. 
5. Every time we shop we have in mind our hourly payment. If a shirt costs $15, that means I’m paying for it with an hour and a half of work. That puts things into perspective. Does it worth it? Can I get it cheaper somewhere else? 
6. We actually care about others. Our level of selfishness has significantly dropped since moving here. As a consequence of having millions of immigrants in their country, Americans have developed a fairly strong sense of sympathy and you can always count on them for help. This mentality rubbed off on us; we’re actually eager to offer some relief through our actions. It’s not uncommon to have a stranger missing his bus because it’s giving you directions or to see a boss doing the exact thing as you do from answering the phone to mopping the floor.
7. Laughing it’s a daily occurrence, not a once in a blue moon treat. Maybe there’s something in the water that makes people always ready to crack a joke, no matter how bad the situation. I’m happy to discover a funnier side of me, one that almost got forgotten while in Romania, where the more long-faced you look, the more you’ll be taken seriously. 
8. When we are at work, we work. At least in the low paid jobs, there’s no time to procrastinate on Twitter, watch photos of cute kittens and just lounge around like we were used to. I can honestly say I give 100% during those four hours as a server versus 70%-75% effort during eight Romanian working hours as a journalist.