Upon arriving in the USA, we immediately headed to our small town of Wildwood, located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern New Jersey, where we had a job offer at a pizzeria. The town immediately surprised us with its cleanliness and beauty. Everything was just like in the movies, just like in pictures and in our imagination. People smiled, waved at us in a friendly way, and asked how we were doing—in general, they showed all those displays of friendliness that, unfortunately, we so often lack in our home country.
After settling into our accommodation, the first thing we did was run to the ocean. It was unimaginable: after 10 years, I was wetting my feet in the Atlantic Ocean again and felt absolutely happy! I will never forget the inspired eyes of my friend, who was having her first encounter with the ocean.
At the pizzeria, we were welcomed very well and in a friendly manner, as the managers of this restaurant already had experience working with international students from different countries and tried to help us with all our difficulties. Working was not easy, but at the same time, it was a lot of fun. I had never encountered so many international guys before, so I eagerly asked them about life in their countries, their culture, traditions, and why they, just like me, decided to spend this summer in the States. After all, reading about it in books and watching it on TV shows is one thing, but hearing it firsthand is something else entirely. I met a huge number of students from Kazakhstan, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Jamaica, Russia, Ukraine, Ireland, Poland, America, Azerbaijan, and many other countries. I clearly remember a conversation with an American student during a rare break at work, when he said with surprise and joy in his eyes how cool it was to communicate with a person from another continent, seemingly from another world, and to understand each other, to realize how similar we are in our aspirations and hobbies.
Our very first trip to a large American city was a trip to Atlantic City with its chic casinos, boardwalk, sandy beach, tall buildings, and an immense number of brand-name stores, which personally, as a girl, made my head spin. Since Atlantic City was the closest city to us, we often went there with friends on our days off from work.
