Some immigrants spent their first nights at the YMCA. Others saw snow for the first time. Some people didn’t mean to end up here at all. What do you — or your parents or grandparents — remember about your first days in the US? Global Nation is partnering with the South Asian American Digital Archive’s First Days Project to tell the stories of your first days in the US.
I am Antonino from Sicily (Italy). I moved to the San Francisco/Bay Area from Germany where I attended my graduate school. I moved at the end of 2007 to do my post-doc at Stanford. I landed in San Francisco in the mist of the Folsom Fair (kind of sado-maso festival). I was shocked to see all these weirdos on the street but more shocking was the taxi driver who would love to run over all of them with his taxi. That was the first example how san francisco is “multicultural.”
The following months were tough. I used to work in a small and isolated place where we were all friends and it was easy to talk during commutes, even with strangers. Well, people looked shocked or irritated just listening my “hallo" at the train stop. At work, colleagues were not pay attentioning if the conversation was going more than five minutes. Finally, not knowing the “dating culture,” I found myself in a very embarrassing situation. The only people I could talk to where the homeless of the glorious bus N22 (very fun riding that bus) and the Starbucks crew in the building where I used to work. It took months to adjust but I tried not to assimilate the bad habit of my colleagues. I did not manage to make any friends on the commute train but I found an American wife. So my plan to stay four years in USA, it is now running for 7 years. I am afraid it will run much longer. :-)
I couldn’t get here fast enough! I moved from London to LA in 1986. My first two vivid memories are:
Being in Vons supermarket and the clerk asked if I wanted paper or plastic, I thought paper meant money and plastic meant credit cards so I said plastic. Then I asked him to put my shopping in paper bags as I wanted to look like Rhoda. The guy thought I was an idiot beyond compare.
The next fun episode involved returning a bra to JC Penney. It was not mine, I was doing a favor for someone. It was a cash purchase and I thought it would involve a no conversation transaction. The clerk wanted to see my ID. I refused to give her ID for a bra. We got into it and security was called. The male security guard was mortified as the bra was being bandied about like a deflated hot air balloon. Eventually the clerk flung the money at me and the guard escorted me out of the store!
Ethel Rohan boarded a plane in Dublin in 1990, bound for California. She was 22 then and had just quit a prestigious job at a bank to restart her life in San Francisco. Good friends had moved out there, found work as nannies, had rich social lives and new adventures. Rohan found it all intriguing. But the United States also meant a way out.
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“People spoke really fast and then you’re trying to figure out everything at the same time,” says Rohan. “Even though I speak English, there were a lot of new terms to me. You know, what’s a ‘cross street’? That was a completely unfamiliar term to me.”
And the idea of just stopping someone to ask directions seemed tricky. “You’re looking around and thinking, 'who looks like I can ask them?’ Everybody’s walking super fast and very purposeful-looking. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing. Of course, I’m sure that wasn’t the case, but that’s what it seemed like and I felt like I was clueless.”
I recall the grand old Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth turning at Sandy Hook, and cruising slowly past the Statue of Liberty on a glorious, clear morning in early January, 1960.
It had been a rough crossing, facing tumultuous seas and force 8 gales most of the way from Southampton, England. The trip took 5 days from Southampton to NY with no intermediate stops. That was usual for liners of the day. Homesickness had conspired with seasickness to make the first 2 days of the trip miserable. When we made New York harbor, however, the weather had cleared and by the time the majestic vessel glided smoothly past the famous Manhattan skyline, misery had been replaced by excitement and apprehension. We tied up at Cunard’s Pier 54 and the whole family debarked to be reunited with our luggage in that cavernous three-story tall hanger, under the giant letter “M.” An interminable wait was followed by the four of us trooping out to catch a cab (to my dismay not even a proper Checker) to Grand Central.
It was uncommonly warm for January. (I remember it as being hot, but later found out it was only in the mid-50s.) My chief memories after we plunged into the canyons of downtown were the squeaks and groans of our cab, the smells of gasoline and cigarette smoke, and the huge size of everything. The cars all seemed immense after those encountered on English streets. The buildings were incredibly, unbelievably tall and the avenues were straight as arrows. New York was crowded, noisy, smelly and very exciting. Grand Central was magnificent and, like everything else that day, enormous.
To a train buff like my 14 year-old self, it was a veritable cathedral of transportation — an almost mythical structure. Later that afternoon we caught a train which snaked all the way along the beautiful Hudson Valley to our destination in Tarrytown, New York.
Sadly, most of the landmarks of that day have since been erased from the face of the earth by progress. Cunard’s once famous Pier 54 (at 12th Street and the West Side Highway), where the survivors of the Titanic landed in 1912 and from which the ill-fated Lusitania departed in 1915, has long since been torn down. Its only remnant is the rusting steel arch at its old street entrance. If you look carefully you can still make out the Cunard, White Star lettering on the crossbeam below that arch. The Queen Elizabeth herself, after a long and illustrious career as a successful Atlantic liner, a troopship during WWII, and a liner again in the fading days of transatlantic passenger travel, is now a burned out hulk resting on the bottom of Hong Kong harbor. Even the New York City of my memory lives on only in street scenes from movies like North by Northwest.
Still, it was a day I will remember as long as I live.
The year 1995, our family arrived in Salt Lake City Utah from El Salvador. What a contrast from the warm temperate climate of Central America to the chilly spring of the Salt Lake Valley. Everything was different and the same. I attended Kindergarten where no one wore a uniform but we still had recess and snack time. My mom and dad worked all day here too, but my Grandma did not look after us when they were at work. Now instead of taking the bus or walking everywhere, we drove around in an old grey Volkswagen Beatle. Like our old neighborhood in El Salvador, everyone went to church on Sunday, but not the same church, not even a Catholic church.
At school, at first, I understood little of what was being said. I had always been a chatter box, but here I learned to observe. I learned to play alone and explore on my own. Although I learned English quickly it was this way for the first few years. By first grade, English was my favorite subject. I loved the library and reading. I kept several journals which I filled out cover to cover with memories, ideas, doodles and souvenirs.
I had no idea of the great economic hardships my parents endured. Looking back I realize we lived modestly in the quiet middle class suburb of Murray.
My mom revealed to me recently that one year she did not have money for Christmas presents so she bought me and my sister the nicest stuffed animals she could find at a second-hand store. She washed them and wrapped them up. I recall that Christmas I got a stuffed dog that had a built in radio. It was my favorite toy. In fact I remembered getting it for Christmas. I remember the tree was small and there were but two neatly wrapped bundles. I loved that toy. It was then that I realized that my sister and I never lacked for anything. Our basic needs were always met: we had education, safety, stability and above all love.
Now, I can only imagine what it must have been like for my college-educated and graduated parents, who in their country were respected professionals, to work on their knees scrubbing carpets, cleaning vacated apartments. I remember my dad holding down three jobs at one point and two jobs for many years.
19 years later, my sister and I are in college. My parents live in their own home. They both work in their professions as they once had in their old country. We are all naturalized U.S. Citizens. I strive to fulfill my dreams so their sacrifices are not in vain. We are deeply grateful and proud to live in America and to be Americans.
Ali Shahidy is the first student from Afghanistan at Norwich University in Vermont. During his first days in the US he realized that all his studies of the English language couldn’t prepare him for ordering a simple sandwich at the airport.
As I ate my first meal in the US, I pondered over the fact that I knew words like abrogate, conflagration and inexorable, but not the words “bun” or “fountain drink.” I could comfortably write professional technical proposals and review solicitations in English, but I broke into a sweat ordering a chicken sandwich.
From India to USA on February 19, 1971
I was a young graduate engineer in India searching for a better life in USA. I came to JFK Airport via Paris. After I landed I had to go through custom check since I came as an immigrant (visa based on third preference) since I had engineering education and US Govt needed engineers at that time….
Remembering our first day, coming from Jamaica West Indies, Me, and my two sisters and my father(R.I.P) along with Mother who came to U.S.A in 1968, the rest of us can d in 1972, August 1, it was hard to adjust at first, but when the cold weather came in, it was awful!! But we all managed to get along! Bless this country, for giving us an opportunity to survive 42 years!
The North Atlantic is not friendly water in early January. I know because in the first days of January, 1961, I crossed from Bremerhaven to New York City on the TS Bremen. I was going home — to a place I had never seen.
Born and raised in Germany I had inherited US citizenship from my naturalized father, who died when I was eight. Coming of age in postwar West Germany, in the American Zone of occupation, and with the knowledge that some day I would come to the US to retain my citizenship, I was uncommonly tuned in to anything American. Even though English was not spoken in my family, the Armed Forces Network was my daily radio ration. I listened to the Arthur Godfrey show, to ‘Luncheon in Munchen,’ and I devoured American literature from Mark Twain and John Steinbeck to Damon Runyon. In 1956 I rocked with Bill Hailey and the Comets, and my friends and I spent hours, days and nights, listening to jazz. When the time came, we perfumed our rooms with Camels, Pall Malls or Chesterfields. Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post were easily available and the illustrations gave us impressions of US life, especially of American cars of prodigious size and flamboyant elegance.
With a small loan from my oldest brother, by now a C-130 pilot in the US Air Force, I bought a one-way ticket, and on the first days of 1961 I embarked on the TS Bremen, headed for New York City via Le Havre and Southampton. My ultimate destination was Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, where my oldest sister — who had married a GI and moved to the US in 1952 — lived with her husband and two children.
At dawn on the 13th of January the ship glided into New York harbor and the port side was asymmetrically packed with passengers looking for and at the Statue of Liberty. Somewhat smugly with US passport in hand I lined up to disembark with other US citizens. I looked for Don Rick, a friend of my sister’s who would drive me to central Pennsylvania. We found each other with relative ease, in part, because I carried my cello and that alone made me stick out. My image of American cars was instantly adjusted when I had to insert my cello and luggage into an NSU Prinz, a diminutive German import, with an acceleration of zero to 55 in half an hour downhill. Next Don took me to get something to eat. And lo, he found an Automat, where plastic wrapped food items were displayed behind small glass doors. Not really knowing what to expect, it was all new and good. Next he took me to the Empire State Building, to the lookout deck, whence I spat over the railing, certain that the spittle would disintegrate anyhow. And then it was on to central Pennsylvania powered by the two cylinder, 600 cc, 20 hp engine in the rear of the Prinz. In the evening of my first day I was embraced by my sister and welcomed by my new American family.
—Michael Bachem of Portland, Maine