First Memories

What is one of my first memories from USA? It was an extremely hot day in June 2009. The sunrays were burning the skin and we’re barely breathing because of high humidity level. We’re heading to a Polish travel agency to get some information about Chicago trip’s schedule. We definitely wanted to get to know the city which we gonna be inhabit. We stopped at traffic lights, just next to a pedestrian crossing. And when we were waiting for the green, an old man went through the crossing with his bicycle. Suddenly, he collected saliva, turned to our side and spited juicy on the road just in front of our car. It wasn’t against us, the man just decided to rid of the surplus of phlegm, however it wasn’t the nicest view which I expected to see after over a dozen hours in the plane and stressful airport check-in. It wasn’t a view corresponding with the picture of powerful America which I kept in my mind.

It was my first day in Chicago.

Two years later I came to Chicago for the fourth time and I stayed here. At the beginning of my living in Chicago I was surprised almost every day by American lifestyle, customs, interesting places, TV shows, people’s behavior: generally speaking by everything, because everything was totally different than in Poland. That’s why I decided to write my Polish language blog: Pamiętnik Emigrantki (Emigrant’s Diary). In my initial post I wrote: “Therefore, I live in this, sometimes impressive and exciting, and sometimes depressing and horrific, Windy City, and I observe. I observe and the effects of my observations I will try to put on this blog in order to show how the living here looks like, what are the common customs, what is surprising for us- Poles, Europeans, and how much the truth about US is shown in American movies.”

3,5 years of my living in Chicago and blogging about that have passed very quickly. Meantime, I discovered three important things which make me happy: traveling, discovering the city, and blogging. Why don’t join all of them? While I write a Polish blog for several years, only now I decided to try a new challenge: blogging in English. I will still be writing about Chicago, travelling and immigrant’s stuff, but I hope I could reach more people around the world. And I still discover something new in Chicago and in US, so I hope everybody could enjoy my new blog: Ika in America.

(Please, be gently with my language skills, I’m still working on it.)