"Welcome to United States of America" said the lady who introduced herself as our case manager at the Memphis Airport on May 22nd 2007. I already thought that it will not be a piece of cake to communicate because her accent was so strong. I realized that was the sentence she had said after a while. I did not know at that time what new things I will see.
At the beginning our house was fine for me . We ate and slept for 3 days. I was so happy and so exciting. I remembered what the cultural orientation teacher told us. According to her it was not good to be too much exciting .She always noticed that people sometimes fall in depression when things do not happen the way they want. We stayed at home for almost 2 weeks. The neighbors were nice and they still are. They are so friendly. Most of them are not from the United States.
Then we went out to start our ESL classes at Catholic Charities. The streets were so big . I found that beautiful . Sometimes in my African mind I thought it was a waste of space . Funny ! Uh! May be it was just unusual for me to see many so big streets. I disliked the idea of buses. I was not use to wait for the transportation for a long time. There is always a taxi waiting where I come from. People were always smiling. I discovered that in United States "How are you?" and "How are you doing?" are just greetings. That means when people say that they do not really want to know how you really are. That is still weird in my mind.
To conclude I was happy to be in Memphis . I think it is a beautiful place. I am still discovering this place and everything hard I handle it by being with my family. There are my strength in this special journey.
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2 comments:
It's interesting to me that you find the wide streets to be beautiful. Most internationals that I have met personally are scared by the wide streets. I was scared of the narrow streets in England.
Yes, "How are you," is not usually a request for information. It's okay to respond with, "fine," and "okay," but if things aren't going that well, it's also okay not to reply.
I still get a little bit nervious, when I hear "How are you". For me it is better to tell "Hello" or "Hi!"
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