Samia
When we came here and we had our first guests, we took them to Niagara Falls.  No, we went by ourselves to Niagara Falls.  And my sister asked me, she used to collect erasers.  Erasers we used to call rubbers back home.  And here rubbers...So I went and asked the lady, “Do you have any rubbers?”  And she, like "Uh!"  And we went on and on.  The whole group had collected around and I finally found out what rubber was and it was so embarrassing! No, I meant eraser with Niagara Falls on, my sister collects it! 

Belgica
Going back to school, maybe, was the bravest thing I did. Going back to school and especially with the insecurity that the classes are going to be in a second language.  And am I going to be able to make it with the second language?  I mean, well Spanish, I had taken Spanish, but that was just my core.  But the rest of them, all of the components of the core in my degree it was all in English. Everything in English.  Sometimes we underestimate our potential.  So I did that. I was amazed learning all of that.  It took me a lot just to enter my first course and get A’s.  And I felt so good, when I went through courses and even American people from here would say, “Did you understand what the teacher said? Can you help me?”  I was like, "What?  This is impossible."  But I know, it was not because of the language.  It was because in my country, as I say, we study philosophy, we study political science very early.  So to me it was not too hard, those subjects.  Then I got A’s.  And if I couldn’t handle the course I just took a recorder.  But somehow, I said, “I gotta get an A, I have to get it, I’m going to get it.”  It takes a lot when you study in a second language. It’s double work.  It will take you one hour; it will take me two hours to do the work.  But, I did it.  I think that was brave.

Fannaram
The language is one of the funniest things about being here, sometimes I don’t understand. I misunderstand. Usually if I speak with people, they don’t understand, they laugh. Sometimes they don’t understand my accent. "Where are you from?" Every time if I talk they say, "Where are you from?" I say, "What do you think?" They say, "Jamaica?" I said, "No." "Africa? Which part of Africa?" "West Africa." "Which country?" "Niger."

Sirkka-Liisa
...  My daughter was six years old and says, “Don’t speak that language to me, my friends don’t understand it.” Because she had learned to communicate in my language at home just the two of us. But my mother-in-law had said, “Don’t speak the other language to our grand-daughter because we don’t know what she’s saying.”  So it was not encouraged.  My culture, my music, it wasn’t welcomed or encouraged in my in-law’s family.  It was something weird that had to be cleaned out and weeded out as soon as possible.

So my daughter ended up going to Finland at the age of 12 and not being able to speak the language.  And I’m a language teacher, so my family was terribly shocked and disappointed in me for not being able to teach it to her.  Now my daughter, she’s 26 and she wants to learn the language.  She’s asked me for tapes and books and now she’s interested in that part of her cultural heritage…. oh I wish she would say something to me in my own language when I’m old and maybe have forgotten English and my own daughter would come to me and greet me in my own language or say something.  That would mean everything to me.

My biggest fear about getting older is, I’ve studied linguistics, sometimes when our brain function gets to be less effective, we could revert back to our own language.  My fear is I’m going to be in some American nursing home speaking Finnish…  And they don’t know what I’m saying. I hope by then my daughter will have learned some words!

I was in my first apartment and there was an American neighbor.  I had been in my apartment two or three months.  My husband was away, of course, in some military duty. I had been watching TV and watching soap operas.  Learning English from books by myself.  I couldn’t drive a car, so I was really a prisoner in the military apartments.  Then, I had started to feel that I’m really isolated.  I don’t know anybody.  That loneliness had gotten to me.  Because not even an international hospitality counselor would come visit you and get you involved.  There wasn’t any in 70’s. Then a neighbor came over and just sort of smiled and said, “Hi stranger.”  And I slammed the door on her.   Because, here comes this woman across the hall insulting me! Calling me a stranger!  It’s so funny, because I didn’t understand any English that you can say that to people that you haven’t seen in a while and it’s not an insult.  But when she said the word “stranger”, I read into it all the things that I had already started to feel that I am different in this culture.  My husband and his friends and all that environment I was in, to them I was a stranger.  I did “strange” things, quote, unquote.  Because I didn’t do them the way American women would do.  So, I did them in strange way.  Strange had a bad, negative, positive meaning to me.  So then I thought I’ve been in my house two months. No one has seen me leave the house except for the swimming pool or the laundry or the nearby grocery.  To me, I was used to very active social life in Europe.  Going somewhere every weekend and traveling and having people over and coming and going.  I couldn’t do that because my English wasn’t very good and my husband wasn’t at home and I didn’t drive.  So I thought I’d been staying in the house so long she calls me a stranger because my behavior by now is strange.

Tirzah
The fact that I lost that accent. I don’t have at all. When you think about identity, language is a big part of it. So my brother and I were talking and one day we just decided we were going to make up an accent! So we were walking around saying like, “Hey mon, what you thinkin’?”  We started talking to my Dad like that and [he] was like, “Don’t do that. You lost it, you lost it, okay. That’s not what makes you Bahamian. It’s just inherent in you. No-one can take that experience away from you.”

Sara
One of the hardest parts of not knowing English was seeing how my children struggled doing their homework.  I could not help them, not only because their homework was in English, but also because I was working at two jobs. Jazmin and Rafael picked up the language so fast that it was incredible.  My children did not have any problem.  They went outside and played with other American kids like they knew each other for a long time.

Nelsy
I remember when I came here it was the Univision channel.  That was the only thing that connected me with Spanish speaking people.  And I used to turn the TV in that channel and Oh! I relax and enjoy!  But [my husband] came and say, “You cannot hear that channel. You have to learn English!”  and turn the TV to the English channel.  And I cry again, and cry and cry!  “You have to read only a book in English and hear only...” and Oh! My goodness!  And I say, “I never will learn, I never will learn.”  But you know what was the most important thing?  I don’t remember exactly the moment, but I remember that one time somebody speak to me in English and I could understand everything and I’m, “Oh my God, I’m learning English! I’m learning English!” And I was answering in English too! So it was just wonderful!  It was!

Ho-Thanh
My father and my mother have the same last name too. They never changed their last name either. But if I married in Viet-nam, I would not change to my husband’s last name either. But they will call me with his first name. Like before, when I married to my husband here, everybody knew him and they called him Mr. and Mrs. Bang. But they don’t call the last name, they call the first name. And everybody know it’s Bang Wife. Mrs. Bang. Bang, that’s it.  It ends up now – we talked about the role reversal – people in the community call him now under my name. He doesn’t like that part. I have to correct them. I have to tell them I’m his wife.

That’s true. That’s really hard. That will be really hard for me to come home to. Because the first time definitely I will be lost. Because even if I speak the same language with them, it’s completely the language I have was in 1975, it’s not the language they’re speaking now.