TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIBED BY Poorvaja R. (x 7)
What is one food you had not yet tried when you came to America?
There were many foods I had not tried, but Mexican food I had not eaten at all. I hadn’t eaten quesadillas, or tacos, beans, Mexican rice…guacamole – I’d never had an avocado, had never had cilantro. So, a huge amount of Mexican food. When you live in a small island, you eat local and the food is like farm to table, same day, because we lived on a small island. Food was very fresh and imported food was very expensive. So we ate pretty simply, but the food was very tasty and fresh.
Was there anything you were excited for when you came?
Yes, the main reason I came here was to be with family. I came here from Germany. I’d been living there for five years, and I was happy. I had a brother living in New Zealand, another brother living in Singapore, and I had a brother and sister living one in Philadelphia and one in Connecticut. So I missed my family. We were scattered all over the world. And over the course of ten years, four out of five of us now live in Philadelphia within ten blocks of each other.
Why did you come to America?
Well, mostly because I missed family. And I didn’t actually really want to come here. I lived in Germany, I was happy living there. But over the course of ten years, my parents had put all our names into a lottery system in Ireland, where they gave out like fifteen thousand green cards to Irish citizens. So I was living in Ireland, my parents had put my name in the lottery every year, and in 1997, my name was pulled out of the lottery. If you didn’t take the card within six months, you lost the opportunity to move here, and it was very difficult for Irish people to get even holiday visas to come here because the American government thought they would stay and work illegally. I also didn’t really have plans on staying, but I knew I’d regret giving up the opportunity without trying.
Is there a funny story from your first few days?
It’s funny now, it wasn’t funny then, but my sister and I went to Conshohocken for some reason. And we were used to countries with no highways, and our sense of direction wasn’t the best. So we went to Conshohocken, got whatever we needed to get, and on our way home, there’s an intersection that leads you back to Philadelphia or to Harrisburg or to New York, and we missed the turn. So we ended up driving all the way to Harrisburg because it was the first place we saw a road sign that said “this is to Philadelphia.” So we went out for an hour and we came back like eight hours later.
What is the first thing you did when you came to America?
The very first thing I did was look for a job, because as an immigrant, that’s what you do. You come here to get a job. So I found two jobs in my first week. My first job was working for an architect from 7 am to 3:30 pm, and then I worked in a law firm from 4 pm ‘til midnight, and I did that for a full year, Monday through Friday.
How did it feel coming here?
It was exciting. But I was also sad to leave Germany, because I worked for an architect there, I had lots of friends, I had a good life. I wasn’t really ready to leave. But it was exciting knowing I had this life ahead of me and I could turn it into anything.
What, if any, were the differences in culture between Irish and American?
We, I found, expressed ourselves differently. I remember taking the bus the first few days I was here and someone asked me the time and I said it was a quarter past eight and everybody looked up. That’s when I realized that I said it maybe differently to how it was said here. We also communicate in a different way. We’re a nation that are pretty sarcastic, self-deprecating, people with dry wit, and that’s what we found funny. I think I soon realized that what I said could get lost in translation or get misinterpreted, so I learned to tone it down and speak more like an American, I guess.
Do you wish you had gone somewhere else or done something different? Why or why not?
I do not wish I had gone somewhere else because I met my husband, I have a child, we have a nice life. America turned out to be a great place to live. The only downside is you don’t have free health care and you don’t have free education. [laughs]
* The contributor of this story has asked that their name be withheld.
