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.

Coping with the language barrier: Why am I talking gibberish

A couple of days ago, at the end of my shift, something happened that made me wish I could rewind my life and change the way I learned English. I was leaning over a table, trying to clean up the juice spills and pick up all the left crumbles with a wet towel, when I saw some colleagues of mine passing by. It was my eight or nine table. 

“Should I wipe those too”, I asked (or so I thought) pointing across the dining room. “Yeah, whip it!” David responded, bursting into a contagious laugh. The others joined him. “I meant cleaning, not spanking”, I tried to explain myself, which only made them laugh harder. This time, I forced a smile, pressing the dirty towel harder against the table.

On the surface, the whole story amused me too, but deep inside it made me angry. How is it possible to talk gibberish 70% of the time with all the amount of reading in English I did back home? I mean, I know a lot of words, I just can’t pronounce them properly; besides reading I didn't do much else. 

I relied too much on reading, forgetting that conversations are paramount in learning a new language. Now I’m acting like a broken radio that catches all the frequencies, but can’t reproduce the tunes without damaging their sound. It’s not exactly ear candy. And no, giving myself a good smack upside the head doesn’t work. I’ve tried.

The fact that people are saying my accent is “charming” doesn’t help either. At this point in my life, all I want is to blend in, be like everybody else, especially with the way I talk.

Sometimes I’m literally afraid to speak. Words slowly roll out of my mouth, barely audible, like I just had a lobotomy. ”Thrr yo go”, I mumble whenever I put a plate on front of a resident; then quickly make myself invisible. 

My husband is in the same boat. At the beginning of his shift you can’t tell he’s a foreign, but as the day progress and he becomes tired, his pronunciation gets worse; to the point that people can’t understand him. As much as I wish, our problem doesn’t have a quick fix. It will probably take a full year or two before our funny accents will fade away, coaxing our brains to switch to English.

Now, if only I could cut myself some slack till then…

A Day In The Life of a U.S. Alien

I thought to switch things up a bit and do another kind of blog post, so you can take a sneak peak at my life as it is. This particular day was a bit boring, but don't most of them are like that, anyway? It's up to us to find something special in every living moment. For example, I never take for granted blogging and exercising, because they keep my mind and body alert. 

Enjoy!

Business card for free? The outstanding surprise I got from a total stranger

It still boggles my mind how much impact can a random act of kindness from a stranger have on ourselves. Months pass by without anything exciting happening and then, out of the blue, a person we just meet while waiting for the buss or standing in the line at Starbucks marks our existence. Sometimes they share a powerful story, compliment a body part we always perceived as a flaw; other times they pay our bill.

Rafal Brzegowy is that type of guy. He's made a fleeting appearance in my live, enough though to make me smile in the weeks to come.

Back in Romania, I took my business card for granted. The secretary used to order them for all the journalists and I would handed them like candy, without even blinking. A recent encounter with an American journalist made me realized how important they are. I ended up scribbling my name and blog on a torn piece of paper!

That's my ugly couch right there

Our income barely covers the basic necessities, so I knew I had to find another way of obtaining a couple of business cards. Last Friday, home alone and sad, I searched the Internet for some Chicago-based printing companies. Three names caught my attention. I send each of them a short e-mail explaining my situation, asking for no more than 15 business cards. When Saturday morning rolled around, I found a positive response in my Inbox. It was from the smallest of the three companies.

The owner, a 40 something Polish established twelve years ago in "The Windy City", asked me to pick up the business cards two day later. When the day finally came, I almost cancelled. A crazy storm and a sharp wind left the impression of a city that was about to take off and fly to Kansas.

Determined to keep my word, I braved the rain at 9 a.m., praying for a little sun. Two CTA buses later, I shook hands with Rafal in his cozy office, somewhere in Elston. A couple of minutes into conversation, he pointed towards a little white box. "It couldn't be", I thought to myself. "I made you 250 copies, you should have plenty", he said, with a genuine smile on his face. Rafal's light brown hair, blue eyes behind round shaped glasses and rosy cheeks perfectly matched his bubbly personality; I could tell right away that he took pleasure in seeing me surprised. He enjoyed giving me this gift. 

We then talked for a while about our lives here; mostly about how we would both choose America if we had to immigrate again. He told me he just had opened his own business, so I figured it out it would be nice to put his business card on my blog. Go check his website too and show his some love!