Rocío, from Mexico

My first day in America was January 9, 1995. I come by bus from Guadalajara to the border and then another bus to Chicago, two days and two nights. My husband was waiting in the station. He was in Chicago two years before me. When I go out of the station the cold hit my face like a hand. I never feel cold like this in my life. I did not have a coat, only a sweater. My husband laugh and give me his coat and he walk to the car only in his shirt.

In the car I look in the window and everything was gray and white. The buildings, the sky, the snow, the people's faces. I think, how the people can live here? Where are the colors? Now I am living here four years and I know the colors come in the summer. In summer Chicago is very beautiful by the lake, with the music in the parks. But that first day I cry in the car and I don't tell my husband. I think he knows.

Rocío now owns a coat, three scarves, and a son born here who has never once complained about the cold. — R.

Krystyna, from Poland

I come to America in April 1994 from Poland, from small town near Kraków. My daughter live here already, she marry American man. First day she take me to big supermarket. I stand in the aisle of cereal and I cannot move. In Poland when I was young you wait in line at store and maybe there is bread, maybe not. Here, one hundred kinds only for breakfast! My daughter say, Mama, choose one. I cannot choose. I take the box with the bear because it is for children and it look happy.

Then in the house my grandson, he is four years, he talk to me in English very fast and I don't understand nothing. I feel like I am the child and he is the grandmother. This is why I come to this class. Now he is nine and I can tell him clean your room in English, and he listen. Sometimes.

Krystyna is our class grandmother. On the last Thursday of every month she brings a poppy seed cake and will not take no for an answer. — R.

Amra, from Bosnia

I arrived to Chicago on a night in August 1996 with my husband and two daughters. We had one bag each and a paper from the agency with the name of a man who will meet us. He was from Bosnia also, he came one year before. He drove us to an apartment on the north side. In the apartment he has put beds, a table, plates, even milk in the refrigerator. People from a mosque and from a church brought these things. I did not know them and they did not know me.

My first night I could not sleep. It was too quiet. For a long time I did not hear quiet like that. I stood by the window and I watched the street light and the cars and one man walking his dog at two o'clock in the morning, slowly, like nothing in the world can happen to him. I thought, maybe here my daughters can be like this man. Not afraid of nothing.

Now my older daughter is in high school and she wants to be a doctor. She corrects my English every day. Sometimes too much.

Amra was a bookkeeper at home. She is studying for her GED this fall and already keeps the books for her cousin's restaurant. — R.

Thanh, from Vietnam

I come to America with my wife in 1993. Our son was here since 1985. We wait many years for the papers. The airplane trip was very long, Saigon to Bangkok, to Tokyo, to Chicago. When we arrive at O'Hare airport my son run to us and he hold me very strong. He was a boy when he leave Vietnam. Now he is a man, thirty years old, with a wife and a car. First I don't know him. He know me.

In his car he play a cassette of Vietnamese songs, for me. At his house his wife cook pho for us. It is not same as in Vietnam, the herbs are different, but I don't say. I eat two bowls. That night I lay in my son's house and I think about my father, who never see America, and I think, my grandchildren maybe never see Vietnam. Life is like this. One family, two countries.

Now I work in a printing shop. I am the oldest one in this class, sixty-two years old. My teacher say it is never too late. I believe her a little.

Thanh has missed exactly one class in two years, for his granddaughter's birthday. I believe him completely. — R.

Oksana, from Ukraine

My first day in America was 2 October 1997. Before, I was an engineer at a factory in Kharkiv, I designed parts for tractors. After the Soviet Union ended, the factory did not pay salary for many months. My husband's brother lived in Chicago and he invited us.

The first day, he took us to his apartment in Ukrainian Village. Many signs on the stores were in Ukrainian! There is a church with gold domes, and a store with Ukrainian bread and sausage, and old women talking on the bench exactly like at home. I thought: I travel across half of the world and I am still at home?

But the next day I went to look for work, and in the office nobody speaks Ukrainian. The woman asked me, "What can you do?" I said, "I am engineer." She smiled and gave me an application for cleaning offices. I think this was my real first day in America.

Now I work in a bakery. When my English is good enough I will take the exams to be an engineer here. The numbers are the same in every language.

Oksana checks my arithmetic every time I total the attendance sheet. She has never found a mistake, but she checks. — R.

Tesfaye, from Ethiopia

I came to Chicago in March 1998 from Addis Ababa. I won the visa lottery. In Ethiopia I was a teacher of mathematics in a secondary school. My friend from university met me at O'Hare. He lives here since 1991 and he drives a taxi. In the car he said, "Tesfaye, soon you will also drive a taxi." I laughed. I thought it was a joke. It was not a joke.

The first day he drove me along Lake Michigan. I said, "This is not a lake, this is a sea." In Ethiopia we have big lakes but this one has no other side. It was gray and very wide and the waves were coming like the ocean in a film.

Also on the first day my friend taught me an important American lesson. When someone asks "How are you?" you must say "Fine, how are you?" and that is all. In my country if you ask how someone is, you wait for the true answer, about the family, the health, everything. Here it is only a kind of hello. I still forget. When the man at the gas station asks me how am I, I tell him about my mother's knees.

Tesfaye drives a cab at night now and comes to class straight from the garage. He has never once fallen asleep in class. I can't say the same for his teacher. — R.

Marisol, from Guatemala

I have 22 years. I come from a village near Quetzaltenango, in the mountains. In my house we speak K'iche' and Spanish, and now I learn English, so this is my third language.

My first day in Chicago was in September 1997. My aunt find me a job in a hotel laundry, folding towels. The first day I fold towels eight hours. Very white towels, a mountain of towels. In my village my mother wash the clothes in the pila with her hands, and we have two towels for all the family. Here one person use three towels in one night! I think, the Americans must be very dirty, or very rich. Now I understand they are not dirty.

When I go home to my aunt's apartment I call my mother with a phone card. She ask me, how is America? I say, Mama, America is many towels. She laugh so much she have to sit down.

Marisol is now a shift supervisor at that laundry, at twenty-two. She speaks three languages. Her teacher speaks two and a half. — R.

Rowena, from the Philippines

I arrived here last year, May 3, 1998, to join my husband who is working here as a nurse since 1995. In the Philippines I was also a nurse but here I am working as a nursing aide until I can pass the board exam. We use English in the Philippines, in school and in the hospital, so I thought I will have no problem at all.

On my first day my husband brought me to the grocery. The lady at the counter asked me "Paper or plastic?" and I did not understand her because she talked so fast and her accent is very different. So I said, "Yes, please." She looked at me funny. My husband explained it to me in the car and we laughed until we cried.

That night I could not sleep, so at 3 in the morning I opened the light and I called my mother in Batangas. It was afternoon there. She asked me if I am happy. I said yes. Then I cried some more, the other kind of crying. That is why I enrolled in this class, to understand Americans when they talk fast. I am getting better. Now I say "plastic."

Rowena came to us to work on her listening and her essay writing for her exams. In the Philippines you "open" a light instead of turning it on, and I have decided I like it better. — R.