CULTURE SHOCK (part 1)

Picture by Frank Bryan

                CULTURE  SHOCK (part 1)

Are  the immigrants shocked, or are we all living in the world of a shocking culture? Since I am discussing the early '90s, I will take bravely the subject of "culture shock," as well as the "shocking culture" the immigrant from Eastern Europe finds in America. Yes, I will talk bravely - afterall, I am brave enough to get into your living room and you - the Americans, were brave enough not to take out a gun and point it at me. You offered me a chair to sit, I sat down and looked around for what else you would offer me. You did not know me. I came out of nowhere. I knew you from the books and the literature. I knew about democracy and slavery (what a comparison); I knew about your education system and hey, rock 'n' roll.

Let's see what my cat's curiosity and my wild cat's patience revealed. Culture shock is described in the Wikipedia as "the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration".... The immigrants go through one or more cultural stages, this is what the internet claims. What I write about sheds some light on my individual and my family's cultural experiences. By "my family," I mean my family at the time. I have the same daughter, but a new husband, who truly did not know what marrying a Bulgarian woman means. It means you are in Heaven and Hell at the same time, until you forget the difference between the two. Ha,ha,ha.

The first stage of the culture shock is described as the "Honeymoon stage." Well, who does not like a honeymoon, unless you are getting married because your parents want you to be married, or you are 3-months pregnant and just about to make it clear to everyone you have been having too much fun around. 

In good families, the honeymoon stage lasts "till death do us part." It was not like that in my case, but let's stay focused. We had no friends speaking our language in America, we jumped right into the new world having no clue how deep the water was, not to mention the fact that my daughter and I didn't know how to swim.... I just knew what Forest Gump's mama told him: "Life is like a box of chocolates, Forest. You never know what you are gonna get." 

With this mindset, I liked what I saw in America. I knew it was new and maybe always would be new to me; it was vibrant, colorful, beautiful houses with small yards and flowers. Don't get me started on the cars. Yes, God forgive me, I was jealous of the guy who had the Porche and had left it right in front on the street. In Georgetown, one of the rich areas of Washington, D.C., there were many beautiful cars I stared at. But the Porche, I still remember. What I knew about cars was squeezed in between The Russian Lada and The Eastern German plastic Trabant.

Once I immigrated, I was not looking back. I was not feeling sad or exulted. I knew exactly where I was. I wanted to be there. You can not psychoanalyze feelings, personalities, reactions of the rest of the population.  If you want to do something and you did it, no one cares about your complaints after that. You just suck it up (sorry for my language.) "Fresh off the boat", I had to march into the world of "Just do whatever it takes to make it within the limits of the law."

Somehow in the midst of it all, I felt relaxed. I felt totally in control of my life. In this chaos of babysitting, poverty, eating noodle soup - 5 cents/piece; hot dogs - 25 cents  a package, I believed a new life is coming - new family relations, new friends, everything new. I did not foresee anything negative. 

In communist times, the government was making plans all the time. Planning about 5 years ahead. I am still into the habit of planning all the time, but only for tomorrow. 

My family unit at the time was shaky, to say the least, friends had taken their own path in life. Many nights were spent crying from exhaustion, but I knew I have a lot to build. 

What I did not know was that American houses are built from wood, not bricks. You  build them fast and destroy them even faster. But this did not happen in the "Honeymoon stage."


To be continued....
  

COMING TO AMERICA (part 3)

Picture by Frank Bryan

                         COMING TO AMERICA (part 3)

Frostburg State University

Writing this section of my blog is extremely difficult. The memories bring more tears  than happiness. 

The deeper we got into the new way of life in America, the more we learned about it; the life plans changed and adjusted, then adjusted and changed over and over. 

Coming to America is quite different from the emigration to Europe. In 1992 and later, when Bulgaria entered the European Union, I did not hear stories from friends about their hard life during immigration. Maybe, they did not want to talk about it. Everything had to be kept a secret. This is one of our national traits. Kind of "whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," only this is not about gambling and drinking. Over time, I realized that keeping secrets defied logic. Sooner or later, in every organization, including the family, a weak link appears. Then comes the realization so much time was wasted not sharing ....

I ask myself many questions, that's my natures. "Why didn't I ask for help when I was hungry? Why all of this immigration life was a secret for so many years?" The answer comes back to me always the same -- I did not want to connect with the past, to show weakness, hopelessness, failure. How many around you talk about their failures?

In 1993, I was accepted in the MBA program at Frostburg State University. Frostburg is situated in Western Maryland; the climate is chilly, but people are not chilly. 1994 was the coldest year in the history of the city. That must have been our luck. The coldest temperature maximum was -21degrees F (-29 degrees C); the total snowfall was 50.6 inches. Frostburg was for me a symbol of the American life in the small, low income part of America. In the little, old, coal mining town with about 9,000 population, I found the University, where there were no other Bulgarians. Out of over 5,000 students, no Bulgarians.... I was the first to discover it! I also became the bread winner of the family with my part-time job as a research assistant. 

My daughter went to the only high school - Frostburg High School. She was an excellent student, there was no need for any help with homework or any modern form of punishment. She was not going anywhere, no one showed any interest in a foreign girl from unknown country. I was also one of the few foreign students at the MBA program. Being different did not attract any attention, but my different way of thinking and antics were helping. This made me a little hip. And I was not even trying.

We lived in a shabby apartment, barely furnished. We had two mattresses, a little TV we took from the trash and a computer (from the school trash). My daughter was sitting on a broken speaker to study; we had no chairs. I was using the school library for papers, requiring a PC. Luckily, technology had not conquered the world that fast. Paper and pencil were still in use.

The worst part of living in Frostburg was the cold. There were so many snow days, when school was not closed. My daughter will try to walk in the snow alone in the days in which I was at school. Most of the times, I was able to pick her up and the two of us were walking trough the deep snow home.

My classes were mostly in the evening. On the way to school -uphill and downhill, on the way back - the same... I am not sure what scared me more - the darkness in this tiny path, or the big dog in one of the houses closeby.  I always felt one of these nights, when the dog was very hungry, he would break off the  chains and would have me for dinner.

 What happened in Frostburg briefly was: The Redskins arrived in the summer of 1995 choosing the city as their training camp. This was the most exciting event for the last 100 years. Next, my daughter graduated high school at 16; then, the parents were all through with their diplomas, degrees and board exams.

The Best Part - we won the Green Card Lottery! It became clear soon thereafter that  the 16-year old would go to Georgetown University - somehow financially this had to happen, while the adults needed to do what they had to do - find jobs and a place to live.

With the broken Nissan, putting in everything we had, we drove back to Washington, D.C.  There was so much done and so much waiting to be done.  The success outweighed the failures.

Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Pic. by G. Coleman