The first person to come to the United States from my family was my elder sister Jacqueline, who was hired by the United Nations as a secretary. It was in 1953. I was not even 15, and it made me dream of America, which I had discovered through movies, like How to Marry a Millionaire, with the beautiful skyline of New York City and Marylin Monroe. Our life in France had yet to improve. Less than ten years after the war, there were a lot of things that we could not afford yet, like a new bicycle or special school trips. Although my mother had been approached by my English teacher, who had recommended for me to join a group of students for three weeks in London and Scotland, I could not go. Life was still difficult, even with my mother working and bringing in a second salary. So, coming to the States was a dream.
Eventually, after getting my translator’s degree from the Sorbonne, I could start working and making a salary. I was the highest in my class, so things began to improve. By this time, it was the 1960s, and I began to travel. In order to come to the States, I had to apply for a job, and that was not easy, as you can imagine. Eventually, I got a well-paid job, but instead of getting it overseas, the job I found was ten minutes on foot from my parents. The first job I found overseas was in Africa, in Cameroon, where we stayed for four years. The next job I found was in Canada, in Montreal. I had also applied for a job at the World Bank in Washington, DC. However, these bureaucracies are very slow, and it took me another five years before the World Bank offered me a job. And that’s how we ended up in the States. It was in 1976, and it took us some time to adjust. I was already 38 years old, after all.
Here, in the States, everything looked different, and there were things I loved, but others that shocked me, like the fact that not everyone had health insurance, something that in France, we took for granted. If I tried to explain that to our friends (we made friends very quickly here, as soon as we bought our house and joined a community), they seemed shocked that we had just arrived and started to make comparisons that were not always to the advantage of the States. It took me some time to understand that you don’t start criticizing what you don’t like. You have to adapt and accept that there may be differences, which are not always working to the advantage of your new country. So, it took me time to adjust, and to understand that things are not always better in your new country, and you have to be careful not to offend your friends by making comparisons that may be interpreted as ungrateful to your new country. I quickly understood that these comparisons could sound arrogant, so I stopped making them. Now, I am perfectly adapted here, and if there are some things that upset me, like the prevalence of firearms, I have to understand that not everything can always be better in your new country, and now that I have been living here with my family for 46 years, I am perfectly adjusted and quite comfortable with my adopted country.
There are many things that I love, like Thanksgiving, which we celebrate every year. We have good friends, with whom we go on trips, like the one we just came back from to the former Yugoslavia. We share their joys and sorrows.
We are very happy here, and the dreams that I dreamed of living in the States as a teenager now have become a reality.
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