Coming to America

As a rule, my memory is not the best and most days blur into one another...but I remember my first few days of college so vividly, it's as if they occured yesterday.

Although I am Indian by origin, I grew up as an expat from a very young age, attending an American international school.  Despite being surrounded by friends from almost every continent and watching American movies all the time, however, adjusting to college life in the US was, well, a shock.

I was prepared for the larger adjustments - the coed dorm with its coed bathroom (why why?) on the first floor, the free flowing alcohol at parties with a few token sodas for the token non-drinkers like me, the granola roommate who went running at 5am every day (triple why??).  After all, I watched the movie Son in Law with my parents two weeks earlier (more on that some other time!) so I was relatively prepared for the overall madness.  

But little things surprised me.

I spent the first month lost.  Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have a reasonably good sense of direction and can follow a map like nobody's business.  But still, for a month, I biked in circles and was constantly lost when in the car with friends.  Until, of course, the day I realized that street signs in the US are placed parallel to the street they name...whereas at home they are perpendicular to the street.  So I always thought I was supposed to turn when, in fact, I was already on the street I was looking for.  Many many circles have I travelled in vain.

There were other adjustments...I wasn't the only one in my dorm who had never used an ATM card or washing machine before, but I was one of the few who had never even seen them before.  And then there was the dorm cafeteria, where "vegetarian" was a dirty word.  I don't even want to think about the number of rice, corn, tofu and soy sauce meals I had!  Best weight loss plan ever.

But perhaps the hardest part of being here was always feeling a few steps behind in the conversation.  I thought I was familiar  with American pop culture.  I mean, I did go to an American school and we listened to American music and watched American TV shows and movies...or so I thought.  What I didn't realize was that the American shows I'd been watching were several years old and most of the music and movies were similarly outdated.  Episodes of shows that I had seen but weeks before were beyond even the rerun stage, and music that my friends considered classics were brand new to me.

I still remember sitting in the dorm lounge with a few other dormmates, working on some dorm project and feeling completely lost as the two sophomore girls were singing along word for word with a song on the radio I'd never even heard of (and that seemed to be playing over and over and over again).  Now I know it was the song Stay by Lisa Loeb and I could probably sing along to most of it myself even to this day.  But back then, it was like they were speaking another language.  Not only were all the jokes and references over my head, but I couldn't even keep up with the music??!  What planet had I come from and where had I landed?

Add to that the fact that I was far away from home and that, too, for the first time.  Other kids talked to their parents once a week because they didn't really want to talk to them more frequently...I did so because to call them more frequently meant paying crazy amounts of money in phone calls.  My peers went home for long weekends and thanksgiving...I never had that luxury because home was just too far away.  And the loneliness was...character building.

It took a few months but eventually I caught up to the references and conversation of my peers.  I worked hard at watching lots of TV and movies and listening to a variety of music...after all, I had to keep my learning priorities straight!  I found friends who helped me negotiate the bizarre world I had landed in and even to blend in (sometimes).  My roommate found a boyfriend and did most of her 5am running from his room instead of mine.  


Slowly, the memories of those early days slowly faded and were replaced by the usual college moments: piling 9 people into my friend's very small toyota corolla hatchback with three of us (me included) sitting in the trunk; pulling an all nighter to watch a movie marathon and then doing the same the next night to study for a chemistry test; almost falling asleep during a chemistry test; sitting in the dorm hallways talking about absolutely nothing for hours on end; jello slides and impromptu dance parties.

But every so often, I am reminded of that scared, lonely, fascinated girl I was in those first few months of college and am amazed at how far I've come.  I meet someone who has just moved here and see that same deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes that I must have had.  I try to tell them to hang in there...it'll be fine.  But I know that nothing I say can take away the overwhelming fear and excitement they are feeling.  Only time - and lots of late nights with friends - will help them find their groove, their niche.  And one day, they will look back with laughter and nostalgia at the newness of everything that comes with being displaced from our usual surroundings, at being an expat.  Just as I am doing sitting here now.