Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

Reading all the recent threads on what to expect and how to cope with your new life in the US I started thinking about our arrival in 1989.

As the title says...I didn't have a clue. I was in denial right until we left Gatwick on the 23rd of May 1989 and was clinging to the promise that if any of us were really unhappy we would return within 2 years.

So how did we get here...

In May of 1988 we arrived in Texas on a 3 week holiday and to meet the family my husband had never known. I wont go into details as it is his story but it was an opportunity to get to know his birth mother and to finally meet all his half-siblings and step father. It was a great holiday, and we all enjoyed our time together with promises of return visits in the future. His mother did suggest it would be great if we ever thought about moving over ........but that suggestion was ignored by me but not by the OH So to cut a long story short I went along with the idea that well maybe it could happen and went ahead and applied with immigration not thinking for a moment that anything would happen. I was wrong! Within 7 months of our initial application we had our physicals, our interviews and our greencards approved so a year from the day of our vacation we were returning to live.

We had no home to sell in the UK as we rented, we sold all our worldly goods and arrived with 8 bags and 4 backpacks. We had enough cash to buy a 12 year old car (Chevvy Caprice....huge car!) and for a months rent in an apartment. The initial euphoria of the "long lost brother" soon disappeared and we realised right from the start we were on our own.

OH took the first job he was offered. It was crap..$6 hour working in a chemical plant hydroblasting. He was guaranteed 40 hours a week but that didn't tell him the 40 hours was usually done in 3 days, then he had to sit by the phone and wait for them to call again, remember this was before the days of cell phones! We were so broke we couldn't even afford an answer machine.
Everything was difficult, from having utilities turned on to stretching the money to pay the bills.

I knew right from the start that I had to drive. You cannot survive in Texas without driving. I was 34 years old and had never driven but I took the bull by the horns and took my written test the first week we arrived and passed 100% and then drove around in the evenings with M in the "tank" . The good thing is we chose a small town to live in mainly for the kids school but it also meant it was ideal to learn to drive with very low traffic.

Our apartment was awful and we had very few creature comforts but we were determined to at least try and make this adventure work. I did the rounds of garage sales every Friday and Saturday. I would read the ads in the local free paper and then ask the mail lady where the different streets were.
Walking around Texas in May/June is not very easy with the heat and humidity but I managed to pretty much furnish our house with cheap garage sale items. If I couldn't carry them home then I would ask them to keep the goods until M was home from work and then pick them up in the car. With it being summer school was already out when we arrived so I had a 10 and 11 year old tagging along with me. Thank heaven for the local library book mobile, my kids read their way through their first few months in Texas!

When we had been here a month I knew we had to get out of the apartment. The neighbors were a bit scary and the frequent Police presence didn't bode well with me. When I read our lease I realised that the agreed rent and the rent they were now asking had differed so I had found a loop hole. On my daily walks around town I had noticed a house for rent, secured it, told the apartment manager we were breaking our lease, pointed out their error and 4 weeks after arriving we were moving into a house (rent was same as apartment as well) I scared myself! I had never been so forceful.

So the house was great, we had met some of the new neighbors and finally the kids were meeting other kids. Things were looking up but we were still living on one very low wage. As much as we liked the town we were in there was no work there so where ever we worked we had to travel at least 7 miles. With one vehicle and M's weird hours it was hard for me to even attempt to find a job. Two months in and I took my test and passed I couldn't believe it. I started applying for jobs encouraged by a new friend who carpooled with 3 other women. I was offered a job as an office nurse for a group of GP's. They were fine with my SEN certification from the UK (that was fine back in those days in Texas!) and starting work at 8am was fine with my shared ride but I had a problem getting home as working for a doctors office it is not a set time to leave. So many times I had to sit in Burgerking nursing a coke until M could pick me up maybe 3 or 4 hours later.

School started in August and both kids soon got into the swing of things. I worried about then being alone while we worked crazy hours but our daughter, now turned 12, was very sensible and mostly they stuck with our rules!

M was still looking for another job. He really hated working in the chemical plants, the job was dangerous, he was lowly paid and the hours were ridiculous. One of our new neighbors was working in a small wood furniture factory and when a position came up there M interviewed. It was slightly better pay, medical benefits which we desperately needed plus he could share a ride with the neighbor by chipping in with the gas money so finally I could drive myself to and from work...yea Things were looking up at last, we even bought a small TV!

For the next few months we plodded on without too many problems. Well I did knock a fence down when I put the car in reverse instead of drive but damage was minimal and all was forgiven when the old guy found out he had a snivelling scared English lady so upset over what she had done. The scariest thing was someone called 911 and an ambulance, cop car and fire truck all turned up. I was so embarrassed

Our first summer was over. We were managing to pay the bills but money was still very tight. We would walk round the malls and walk on the beach at the weekends, or do anything that was free. The fall was a great relief from the heat and we were finally not always asking each other "why did we do this". Of course it didn't stay easy. Our landlord died and his family wanted to sell the house. So back to hunting another rental, luckily a small cul-de-sac further along from us had a rental sign outside one house and we were lucky to be the first to apply. We moved ourselves one night when it was dark carrying the furniture that we couldn't load in the huge car trunk. I can laugh about it now but we did it at night so the kids wouldn't be embarrassed. M borrowed a sack barrow from work and we put the sofa on it, he pushed and I steadied it. I'm sure the locals thought what a bunch of crazy Brits!

We had our first Thanksgiving sitting at home by ourselves not really understanding this new holiday. Turkey with all the trimmings was not in our budget at that time The build up to Christmas was when we all became very homesick. The packages from family in England helped and harmed.......this was the first time we really considered going back, only we couldn't as we couldn't even scrape up enough for 4 airfares. There were no invites to spend Christmas with our "new" family they all had plans and it seemed hunting and sale shopping were the biggest plans most of them had I had to work on Christmas Eve and on Boxing Day which was very odd so we got through this time with lots of calls from home on Christmas Day and the hope that the New Year would bring better luck.

M and I have always had a good strong marriage and coming here made it even stronger. We had to lean on each other so much in the first years and to be honest some of the time we were completely broke, scared and unsure of what would happen next. But we carried on. In February 1990 our son got very sick and had to be admitted into hospital. He was in for 5 days with a bad cellulitis from a graze on his knee that he didn't tell us about. Two weeks later the furniture factory closed down and M lost his job (and our benefits).
So back to square one...only one wage and no medical benefits. Then another disaster, I was bitten by something on my arm and it swelled up, lumps under my armpit. Luckily our insurance had a few days to go before it discontinued so now it was my turn to be hospitalized. The offending area was opened and drained and the day I was supposed to leave the nurse taking care of me badly scalded my arm with water meant to draw out the infection (she microwaved the water) So I am now in worse condition than when I was admitted.

We couldn't believe our bad luck. We were ready to throw in the hat and leave. I had to have my arm dressed everyday, I couldn't work for a couple of weeks and M was out of work and now our medical insurance was over as well. We were immediately advised to sue the hospital, which, being newly off the boat so to speak we didn't think we could, so we didn't The hospital picked up the tab for what the insurance didn't pay on my initial admission, they also wiped the slate clean of what we were still paying from when our son was admitted and also compensated me for not being able to work. I guess they were lucky we were so green at that time...


May arrives and we have been here 1 year, we are still talking about going back but no big decisions yet. M found a job as a digger driver, better money but no insurance. I changed jobs and moved to another GP office with a female Dr that had left the group. Life was a little easier, we had the minimum amount of insurance coverage as that was all we could afford. We had to buy a second vehicle as we were going to work in opposite directions. We bought a small cheap second hand truck........great for if we had to move again.

School was out again for summer. Both kids had great social lives, lots of friends and were being invited all over the place through the summer which made it easier on my conscience for being a working mum. I thought we could finally relax but of course not. Another rental problem, landlord was raising the rent by more than $150 a month, no way. Not only could we not afford it also the house just wasn't worth it, so back to the drawing board only this time all four tenants in the cul-de-sac were doing the same thing. We wanted to stay in the same town so we didn't have to change schools so it was hard to find anything for a while. Then M's boss had a cousin who was getting divorced and wanted to rent his house out so we jumped in quick and moved again....I knew that truck would come in handy!

So within a year we had moved 5 times! I would like to say it all got easier but it didn't. M was very unsettled he was more homesick than any of us, which was odd as he was the one so gung- ho about life in the US. I was ok on and off and the kids they didn't care too much where we lived. We decided on our 2 year limit and would then decide. Money was still fairly tight and of course M's job was only good if the weather co-operated. So lots of weeks his pay check was really low. He took other construction jobs but it so casual here you never knew from one week to another what would happen.

We had sat through our first tornado and our first hurricane. We also all had the flu at the same time and were so sick for one week it was everyone for themselves! We survived another Christmas, a new year and then in March 1991 we were told our rent house had been sold and we needed to be out in 2 weeks. That was the final straw. We quit our jobs, sold our vehicles and all the other bits and pieces we had accumulated and bought tickets to head home.............



(If you're interested I'll continue later)

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

I'm at work so it will be later today when things quieten down.


The OH was reading it last night and he turned to me and said "we were crazy weren't we". I guess we were but very determined as well..

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

.......March 1991. The first Gulf War was winding down at the same time our life in Texas was ending. We had finally.........(next installment tomorrow!)

Originally Posted by penguinsix

Started to remind me of the movie 'In America'.

I really think you should flush it out with the next chapter and put it in a WIKI or Article, sort of a 'this might be what to expect' for others about to take the plunge.

Originally Posted by FlirtyKnickers

oh my god....im totally hooked... roll on tomorrow!!

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

I'm at work so it will be later today when things quieten down.