DEPARTED FROM
Tampere, Finland
ARRIVED IN
Boston, Massachusetts
YEAR
2002
AGE
6
NOW LIVES IN
Seattle, Washington
Kaisa Rautiainen was only six years old when she first came to the United States with her parents and two brothers. Even at such a young age she still remembers her two-week trip with her family, searching for houses to eventually move into. Sitting in a hotel room in Boston, Massachusetts Kaisa and her brothers watched SpongeBob SquarePants for the first time. Her lack of the English language had her thinking that SpongeBob SquarePants was about a block of cheese that lived under the sea, information she happily shared with all of her friends in Finland.
Getting back to Boston, Kaisa entered kindergarten still not understanding English. Her mom actually went with her for the first two weeks of school in order to help. Unfortunately, Kaisa cried for a solid month because she couldn't understand anything, it took nearly six months for her to somewhat understand what was going on. She remembers her teacher making flashcards that were half English and half Finnish, they were a tremendous help.
Kaisa now speaks fluent English while thoroughly enjoying her time in Seattle, studying at the University of Washington. Although she likes Seattle, she still prefers the east-coast and actually having four different seasons.
TRANSCRIPT
Before we moved we came and visited for like two-weeks to look at houses and we were staying at this hotel and me and my brother would just watch cartoons like most of the day.
And SpongeBob square pants was on and we did not know English, so we didn't know like what like SpongeBob was a sponge because we didn't understand English.
So, me and my brother thought he was a block of cheese and we went back, like we literally thought the whole show was about this block of cheese.
And then we went back to like Finland and told all our friends, we're like "oh my god there is this really cool American cartoon about this block of cheese," and we then, we didn't realize till like a few, like probably a month later that SpongeBob is a sponge under water, not a block of cheese.
