Conquering America: Tales of an Immigrant

By Henriette Ozimek

Conquering America captures the true life experiences of a girl in her mid twenties that got the opportunity to go work at the headquarters of her company in America. It contains fun things she did, the strange things she encountered, the missing and longing for the things she left behind in South Africa as well as finding herself, losing love, finding love and the joys and ordeals she encountered with immigrating to America.

The outline of this book is based on the weekly Pittsburgh Posts that she sent to her loved ones back home to inform them on what she is doing, also to educate and tell them what she did and what she found. These weekly posts got very good feedback and her distribution list grew as the months flew past.

This book will appeal to everyone that has lived overseas, everyone that is currently living overseas, everyone that wants to live overseas as well as anyone that loves to travel. Life lessons learned and general knowledge obtained is shared in a straightforward manner in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468559538

Book preview

Conquering America

Tales of an Immigrant

Henriette Ozimek

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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© 2012 by Henriette Ozimek. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/29/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5955-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5954-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5953-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012903975

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter One

The Adventure Begins

I landed safely in sunny, warm Pittsburgh. While we waited for our lift on the curbside pick-up zone, the sun was shining happily on us, leaving my skin with little bumps of pleasure. The soft wind took the edge off the heat of the sun’s rays, and the smell and humidity level made me feel that I was on the east coast of South Africa in sunny, hot, humid, Durban. The big problem with packing for a country in which you have never set foot is that, even though you can look up the temperature of the city, you remain unsure if it will feel cold or hot. Twenty-five degrees Celsius with lots of wind could feel cold, but the same temperature with a high humidity could feel warm. Luckily, it was spring when I boarded the plane in South Africa and autumn when I landed in America. Both places were pleasantly warm. The experience seemed surreal as we drove from the airport to our new apartments in Monroeville. I am in America!

The first time I went overseas was in grade eight when my mother said, We can go to Egypt if you save enough money for the trip. Saving is one of my greatest attributes. After we toured through Egypt and Israel for two weeks, my mother and I were bitten by the travel bug. From that year forward, as a nurse, she went overseas two to four times a year to attend conferences. I too wanted to see the world. When the opportunity arose at the company where I worked in South Africa to work at our headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for two months with another colleague, I rejoiced.

I needed to get away from my way of life. I felt suffocated by my daily routine. Dissatisfaction had spread like an infection in my being. It all started when my company lost our main client, I had no work to do but still had to look busy every time my boss came into the office. I love my job as an engineer, but I really felt dissatisfied filling in my timesheet with lies every week. It is more tiresome to sit and look busy than it is to actually do something constructive. A sense of worthlessness soon crept up on my conscience. I had endured two months of this torture before I boarded the plane and set off for America. It is funny how, when you are going through the drought, it feels like years, but when you look back, you realize it lasted but a few months. Just like when you are single, you wonder when you will find the next boyfriend. It might seem like ages until you find him, but it was all but a few months.

The other major dissatisfactory issue I was experiencing was my love life. How long had I been dating my boyfriend? More than a year but less than two. I was not happy about where our relationship was heading, but he was very satisfied to go nowhere slowly. I needed to clear my head on this matter, and being apart from each other for two months might be just what we needed… what I needed.

One of my primary school friends went to London with her husband. She created her very own, personal version of the London Times every few months to send home to friends and family members so they would know about her new life. In this publication, she shared pictures and stories of places that she had visited and people she had met on her travels in the strange, faraway land. She is very creative and original. It was a good template to work from, so I decided to do a weekly Pittsburgh Post that I could share with a handful of people—family, close friends, and colleagues.

Pittsburgh Post

75¢ Edition 1 11 September

Fly Away, My Little Bird

The long flight to Washington DC seemed short thanks to ample entertainment on board. The plane made a one-hour stop in rainy Dakar at midnight local time. The first thing that hit me after stepping into the Washington Airport was the pleasant aroma of coffee, which came from nowhere else but from Starbucks Coffee. The flight from Washington to Pittsburgh felt like a spin around the block after the seventeen-hour flight to Washington DC.

My First Night in Pittsburgh

After the long flight and a hot day in Pittsburgh of unpacking, settling, and shopping, it was time to go to bed. Not even the big pool party that the speed bikers’ club held next door could keep me awake. I slept like a baby. The following morning I awoke to soft rain cascading through the streets.

Next to The Racquet Club Apartments where I lived have a gym and a big swimming pool called The Beach. There is an office park across the street.

Honda Valley

It was interesting that the US models of cars like Toyotas, Mazdas, and Volvos look very similar to South African models. It is mostly the indicator lights that differ. I also saw a Kia Sportage and Hyundai Sonata, both of which look very similar to ours. The Accord is actually an Acura. There are so many Honda Accords/Acuras and Civics here that I could pick and choose what color one I want to photograph in the apartment’s parking lot.

Here are not many BMWs, Mercedes or Audis. Here are no Renaults, Citroens, or Peugeots here, which is a good thing, since French cars are best kept in France. Tatas, Mahindras or GWM trucks are not seen here either. Those Eastern and Indian car manufacturers have yet to infiltrate the American market.

Facts about Pittsburgh

• The robots (they are called traffic lights here) take very long to change-up to three minutes.

• When the robot is red, you can sometimes still legally turn right.

• The robots hang from cables across the road. They are not mounted on poles as they are in South Africa. This makes it easy for me to miss the robots.

• There are many drains (manholes) in the roads.

• The highway to and from Pittsburgh has up to four lanes in each direction, but there are two separate tunnels of two lanes each leading into and out of Pittsburgh, which generates a bottleneck.

• It is law that you must wear your seatbelt in the car, but not a helmet when driving a motorbike. (Other states require a helmet when driving a motorbike).

• The Racquet Club Apartments have almost everything— dishwasher, microwave, huge fridge/freezer, iron, and ironing board, TV, humongous stove, and a filter coffee machine, but no kettle or hairdryer. I have converted the coffee machine, and now it makes nice, hot South African herbal (rooibos) tea.

• There are no lights in the ceilings; there are lights mounted on the walls, and there are lamps. This is one of the most frustrating things about the way noth-east coast Americans build houses. Why not put a switch on the wall that you can switch on without stumbling in the dark and hurting your little toe on the leg of the bed? A light in the ceiling also gives off much better light than a little bedside table lamp. Trying to see what clothes are in your cupboard is quite a challenge.

• The shops close around nine to ten at night, unlike the eight o’clock closing time that I am used to.

• The people are friendly and helpful.

• The people talk with a very specific accent themselves but they find it hard to understand the South African accent.

Chapter Two

American Ways—and Football

My first week in the new office with new people went well. The first day is always the worst when starting a new job. If you survive the first day, you’re on your way. I was flabbergasted by everyone’s friendliness. Everywhere I went, people were more than willing to help. South Africans are renowned for their friendly nature. I went to Pittsburgh with the idea that Americans are very professional, prim and proper, but I must say, they are totally the opposite of what I had expected. They are welcoming and friendly. Every time I say thank you, the response is you’re welcome, which makes me feel so special. They are not used to the response, pleasure, when someone says thank you, which I am used to at home. I said thank you more than what was necessary just to get a you’re welcome response. It worked without fail.

The Pittsburgh accent is something to get use to. It takes intense concentration to understand it. By the end of the day, my internal translator was exhausted. I am sure I can translate only a finite number of words per day before it shuts down. When I am tired, translating is a lost cause—you might as well be speaking Greek to me. Every time I open my mouth, my own accent falls heavily on my ears. I also thought we South Africans had an accent that other people found unpleasant—similar to an Australian one—but people like my accent. It sounds more British than anything else. I guess if you mix British and Dutch you get South African. There is another South African lady who has been working in America for sixteen years now, and people keep on asking why she has a different accent from mine. With my trained ears, I can tell that she was raised with English as her first language. Conversely, I was raised with Afrikaans as a home language. Luckily, English is compulsory from grade one for everyone. I can understand English well, but listening is totally different from speaking it. Is’ and are are still slipping into the wrong contexts when I speak. There is also a world of difference between speaking English casually among friends and speaking English in a professional working environment.

You will laugh at me, but I kept on bumping into people, especially when I went around corners. After a day and a half of playing bumper cars, especially with one sexy system engineer, it hit me. Just as Americans drive on the opposite side of the road, they also walk on the other side of the corridor. No one told me that, and how am I supposed to know? I felt so stupid. I am now making a conscious effort to always walk on the right-hand side of the steps and the corridors.

The work is very interesting. Any work at first is exciting, but this measuring unit system with which the Americans work, in is a discomforting challenge. The coffee machine asked if I wanted a six-ounce, eight-ounce, or twelve-ounce cup of coffee. I just wanted a cup—how much might that be? I learned a lot in a week. One gallon is about four liters, and there are twelve inches in a foot, which is 30 centimeters (one ruler). Really, people, why not use the metric system where ten is the magic number for everything? There is no logic to the American unit system—none whatsoever. My mother knows both unit systems, but I guess I will pick it up as I go along. Even the Americans think it is a stupid unit system, so maybe the government must try to change it again to the most-used system in the world, the metric system. Is that not the purpose of a standard unit system? A generation or two, and then everybody would be calibrated to a more logical system.

I was not even in Pittsburgh for a week, and I was already being told by everyone about the Steelers, which is one of the best football teams, and the Penguins, which is one of the best ice hockey teams. Then, of course, there are the Pirates, the notorious baseball team. Pittsburgh is the Black-and-Gold City. All the sport team colors are black and gold. People decorate their work cubes with the terrible towel, which is a yellow towel the fans wave around in the air at Steelers games. Both the Steelers and Penguins are champions, but the Pirates have not won in decades.

The opening season of the football is not taken lightly in Pittsburgh. Workers in the office dressed up in yellow and black and celebrated this event the whole day with muffins and bagels for breakfast and stew for lunch. They even had Steelers decorated cupcakes. It was a proud feeling to participate in such a great tradition, and fun to know that the people take their sports so seriously. The concept of tailgate parties was also explained, but we did not completely grasp it. We dubbed it a trailer gate party by sheer ignorance. The tickets to a Steelers football game are as scarce as hen’s teeth and horribly expensive, so going to see a game in person was not even an option. The Steelers football stadium is called Heinz Field (after the company that makes the famous tomato sauce—ketchup—and pickles).

When in Rome, do as the Romans. So off we went after work to Rick’s Sports Bar to watch the opening game of the season: the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Tennessee Titans. I had never been in a sports bar like this before. In the middle of nowhere, next to a highway, is a big sports bar with a games room next to it and a basement with a bar. The walls are covered in side-by-side big, flat television screens. It was dim and noisy, but that contributed to the atmosphere. On each table was a little speaker broadcasting the game. The all-you-can-eat taco bar made the game seem to be over before we knew it.

My South African colleagues and I had no idea what the rules of football are. We were invited to a football cookout one Sunday afternoon by our project manager. We also didn’t know what a cookout was, so we went with some doubt. A cookout is hamburgers and hot dogs cooked on a gas grill. We were also introduced to the game of cornhole. This consists of two wooden platforms, two feet by four feet, each with a six-inch hole nine inches from one of the two-foot ends. They are set up at a ninety-degree angle about twenty-seven feet apart. There are two sets of three six-inch cloth bags, each filled with two cups of raw, dry corn. Two teams are chosen. The aim is to see which team can throw the most corn bags through the hole in the wooden platform while standing near the other platform. Between playing cornhole and cooking out, we sat through a whole four-hour game of football. The rules were explained to us time and time again, but to me it seemed like grab the ball; run a few feet or yards; stop. All I saw was stop and start, stop and start. In rugby you grab the ball; run a hole through the big guys; and hopefully do not stop before you reach the other side of the field. I would love to see football players versus rugby players, I wonder who would win?

Sportsmen are the same all around the world. Ruthless Roethlisberger was in the news for all the wrong reasons—usually girls accusing him of being too frank with them. Another rugby player was in the news when videos were revealed of him and a stripper, and for being involved with drugs. Rugby is too brutal for my liking, but it is at least only two halves of forty minutes each, unlike the never-ending four fifteen-minute quarters of football. With all the stop and start, the games usually last well over three hours.

Before and during a rugby game and during halftime, there is entertainment for the crowd. This includes girls in little, cute outfits trying to encourage the crowed to cheer even louder for their team; mascots being foolish; and musicians performing their latest hits. Our rugby roots started with the British rule. South Africa won their first international World Cup, the very first time they partaicipated in 1994. The Americans made a movie about this event, called Invictus. Our arch enemy is Australia when it comes to rugby and cricket, but New Zealand is also a rugby arch enemy of South Africa. England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and France are the most famous rugby-playing countries in the world. At home people usually have a cookout when they watch rugby, but we call it a braai. The Australians’ cookout is called a barbie (short for barbeque). In South Africa, we invite some friends over to our house and all the guests bring their own steaks and boerewors (farm sausage) and beer. The girls drink ciders or wine. The guys will braai, and the girls will talk while making salads. We all watch the game while we enjoy our medium-done steaks and boerewors. The fifteen-minute halftime is the perfect chance to get seconds and fill up your glass, which is usually the men’s job.

Pittsburgh%20Post%202.JPG

Pittsburgh Post

75¢ Edition 2 18 September

Up, Up and Away

In the olden days, Mount Washington, Pennsylvania, was the site for many prosperous coalmines. The best way to see the breathtaking view from the mountain is to take one of the two restored inclines which were built in the 1870s.

The bird’s-eye view of Pittsburgh from Washington Mountain is spectacular with the big river between us and the tall skyscrapers and the hills far beyond them.

Office Trail Party

The start of football season is not taken lightly in America. Every department at work brings a lot of food. It starts with muffins, bagels, and quiche for breakfast, and finishes with stews and cupcakes for lunch.

Steelers Did It Again

The Pittsburgh football team—the Steelers—have been reigning champions. They started the season well by winning the Tennessee Titans 13-10.

Office with a View

The office plan consists of an open floor fitted with hundreds of grey-and-cream cubes. My cube is two down from the big windows, and what a view those windows present—a huge green lawn where some deer occasionally feed, and then forest reaching the horizon. I have never seen so many big, green, dense trees in my life. Pennsylvania is just trees on hills, and hills with trees. These trees filter the air so it is clean and fresh, compared to the polluted, brown, dusty air of Pretoria.

Fast Facts

• The doors on the bathroom stalls do not have little signs that show the word occupied in red when someone is in the toilet. But there are small gaps on either side of the door and big gaps above and below the door so that you can see if someone is inside. This is a bit discomforting if you try to push the door open but it is locked. My new trick is to bend down to see if I see feet. Why this country does not use occupied signs that turn the lock red when you lock the door is beyond me. The good thing at least is, if the lock gets stuck, you can climb under or over the door to get out. This would be impossible with my familiar full ceiling-to-floor doors.

• I feel quite at home here with the continuously roadworks going on and the big concrete blocks between the different lanes on the highway.

• Walking on the wrong side of the corridor was more difficult to get right than driving on the right hand side of the road. And countless times I have stood in front of the right-hand door to go into a shop, but that is the exit door.

• I could not yet find spray-on deodorant in a can.

• If you find something in the shop that you like, especially when it is on sale, you must buy it, because the chances of it being there tomorrow are very slim.