America, Here I Come!
America here I come – finally, the moment I had been impatiently waiting for was here. After all those sleepless nights, I was getting ready to set off and leave my home behind for a year.
But for now, the smoldering chaos reached a nerve-wracking climax on this last day. My grandma had tried to help me in the last few days by developing a constantly perfecting suitcase packing technique that would guarantee that I could fit as much as possible into one piece of luggage. It still wouldn’t fit, so I spontaneously threw all her great planning out the window and had to take a second suitcase. This brought her to tears, and my mother was also completely exasperated. This last morning was characterized by hectic, shouting and tears, and then the clock showed just before noon, now we really had to go! The first farewell followed, as there was simply no more room for my brother in the family car because of the monstrosity of suitcases, and he couldn’t go to the airport with us.
Two of my friends were already waiting on the train platform to wish me all the best and say goodbye. Just like the first one, this farewell was also frighteningly easy for me, perhaps because I still couldn’t really realize the whole thing.The hour-long train ride to Frankfurt passed relatively quickly, and considering how big Frankfurt Airport is, it was quite a feat to find the right check-in desk after getting lost only once. My father tried to get several employees to get Caro and me seats next to each other, but unfortunately this turned out to be a rather futile endeavor as all those approached insisted that both people had to be present in order to organize such a thing, but Caro didn’t arrive for another hour. As we didn’t know she was going to be late, we spent the time peering for her. A brown-haired girl my age accompanied by a family who, even if they were only half as upset and confused as mine, shouldn’t really be hard to overlook.
My grandma, of all people, was the first to spot her, as we were of course looking in the wrong direction, and embraced the somewhat bewildered-looking girl with a beaming smile. The rest of the greeting was also somewhat awkward. “Hi, it’s me. And, um, that was my grandma.” Caro quickly overcame her surprise and tried to help us find adjacent seats. But despite her supposedly necessary personal assurance that it was indeed in her interest to sit next to me, the nice lady at the counter could do no more than smile kindly. That was no longer possible, the plane was fully booked. At least I didn’t have to pay an extra cent for the second suitcase, which we had actually expected to have to load a lot of money onto its conscience. The rules had changed, in this case for the better. I could only imagine Amelie’s reaction all too vividly, as she hadn’t been able to fit everything into one suitcase either and so had to give up a not exactly cheap package filled with winter clothes and addressed to her host family.
At some point we remembered that we hadn’t eaten anything yet and of course my family began an exhaustive search for the most German restaurant in the airport building – it had to be before departure. However, the well-intentioned pork medallions with spaetzle didn’t really excite me; at the airport it was probably more about eating quickly than tasty. And so we did, only to say goodbye to each other for the very last time afterwards. And to my surprise, my father was the only one who cried, otherwise such emotional outbursts were more the specialty of my mother and grandmother. I was more than relieved when all the saying goodbye was finally behind me, and I was able to walk through the security barriers with Caro.
While we were sitting in the waiting area, we could hear from the conversations of some of the girls that they were also nannies, and some of them were actually wearing the wing-awarding AP T-shirts. However, we didn’t feel too keen to join them, as we were happy to be enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet. And most of the girls seemed even more overexcited than we felt.
On the plane, Caro landed two rows behind me, and another nanny next to me. Well, there had to be something we could do. We decided to continue our conversation regardless of the distance, and in response to the questioning looks from the girl next to me, I told her several times that Caro was a very good friend of mine. The tactic worked and my poor neighbor finally, annoyed, offered to swap places with her. In this case, the goal justified the means, as we had a nine-hour flight ahead of us, no TV and not the nerves to read anything in peace. The only option was to talk.
The American ministry was kind enough to provide a little fun diversion in the form of a questionnaire that we had to fill out during the flight. “Are you familiar with explosives?”, “Have you ever worked as a spy?”, or more directly to the point: “Are you currently a member of Al-Qaeda?” I looked around furtively, but didn’t witness any suicidal yeses. I wondered how many criminals and terrorists the Ministry had already been able to catch with the questionnaire?
At a quarter past seven, New York time, our plane touched down on the landing strip at John F. Kennedy Airport and I set foot on American soil for the first time in my life. And of course, I immediately managed to get into a fight with the man at the visa control. Apparently, I had forgotten to fill in part of the questionnaire, so I seemed to be the one with obvious suicidal intentions. Thinking about whether I was entering the country with terrorist intentions or not had probably distracted me too much. The whole thing wouldn’t have been so tragic if the disgruntled gentleman hadn’t mumbled to himself in such a bad mood that I couldn’t understand more than every third word, even with the greatest effort. After a while, he slammed the form in my face, completely exasperated, with the words “Don’t you know your own name?” Unfortunately, I also only understood this kind question after asking him several times. At least then I knew what I had forgotten to fill in.
I had imagined the highly praised friendliness of the Americans to be a little different. I was also slightly overwhelmed with the electronic fingerprints, as I either held my fingers too high or too low and didn’t press hard enough. I thought that the officer wouldn’t let me through because I was dangerously stupid, but the miracle happened, which unfortunately didn’t break the chain of embarrassment for me.
Challenged to a duel by my suitcases and not in possession of a luggage trolley, which would have cost dollars I didn’t yet have, I managed to stand in the way of a surprising number of people or drop the smaller suitcase at their feet as they hurried past. I got a lot of annoyed and sometimes pitying looks, but nobody really wanted to help me. So I pushed my way like a living obstacle through the orderly stream of other airport passengers to the redemptive place of customs control.
The man there turned out to be much nicer than the grumpy passport inspector, but his pronunciation was at least as bad and I understood even less. He told me something about suitcases and standing, from which I concluded that he wanted me to stand next to my suitcase. After all, we had heard enough about the strict security measures here, and perhaps it was a rule that I stood next to the suitcases while he examined them more closely. At some point, however, it dawned on me that he just wanted to explain to me how I could remove my suitcases as quickly as possible and clear the way for the ever-growing queue behind me.
I would have preferred to take the next plane home straight away, I had already embarrassed myself so much in the first few minutes in the USA that it was more than enough for the next few months. But I got through it, tried to find Caro again in the crowd, and together we decided to treat ourselves to a small bottle of water, after the flight we were dying of thirst and almost fell over when we heard the price: a hefty 6 dollars! So in addition to the claim that everyone here was incredibly nice, the second promise turned out not to be entirely credible. In America, everything was NOT much cheaper. 200 dollars a week suddenly seemed like mere breadcrumbs – just enough to teeter on the brink of financial ruin.
A fat, bald man, visibly sweating from the sweltering temperatures outside, held up the eagerly awaited sign with the AP logo. One by one, all the nannies gathered around him, and he ticked off the names on a list. When he had finished, he grunted with satisfaction and waved us into the private bus that would take us to the infamous training school.
Despite the darkness, I was able to get some first impressions of what was, in my case at least, the land of unlimited opportunities for embarrassment. One Dunkin’ Donuts lined up next to the other, and I didn’t know how many more fast food joints and gas stations I counted during the hour-long drive. The wide roads were mainly used by large trucks or jeeps, so everything was pretty much as you’d always imagined.
At least from the outside, the training school looked very impressive. It consisted of a whole complex of buildings adorned with magnificent white pillars. A row of smiling girls greeted us and handed us each a bottle of water. I wish I’d known this earlier. Then a large part of my manageable fortune wouldn’t be slumbering in the depths of the airport cash register.
Bed linen and room keys were handed out – of course I wasn’t assigned to a room with Caro or Amelie, but actually to the girl who had originally sat next to me on the plane. I could only hope that she wasn’t resentful. The rooms were about what I had imagined, very small and uncomfortable bunk beds were the only furniture, but at least it looked reasonably clean. The shock was great, however, when we realized that there were only two bathrooms in our entire house, one of which was locked, to make matters worse. If you’re trying to imagine what it’s like when more than a hundred girls share a washroom, you’d better leave it alone.
Although everyone was tired and exhausted after the flight, some highly motivated member of staff gave us lectures on the rules of the training school, the course of the lessons and the structure of the building complex. Hardly anyone really listened, some were already falling asleep. We finally dragged ourselves to our rooms and beds, happy that we would be getting a good night’s sleep. My third roommate turned out to be a Brazilian woman who was constantly beaming and in a good mood. I guess she hadn’t forgotten to write her name on the questionnaire.