Moscow journalist about five years of life in Texas - ForumDaily
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Moscow journalist about five years of life in Texas

In the eyes of many townsfolk, Texas is a wild prairie with mustangs and drunken cowboys, scorching from their Colts to the right and left. However, such ideas about the southern state of the United States, to put it mildly, are outdated.

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

Continuing a series of materials about former compatriots abroad, journalist Dinara Gutarova, who has lived in Houston for many years, told the publication Lenta.ru report about local life.

Russians in Texas

The sun and palm trees - this is what I now see every morning in the window instead of a dull, cold, but such native Moscow. I moved to Houston 5 years ago. I always dreamed of living in a big city such as Barcelona, ​​where there are museums and concert venues, and at the same time that the sea was near. Now to me that to the Gulf of Mexico, that to the museum district - 40 minutes away by car. I live in the suburbs, in the area where the NASA space center is located, the office of Boeing and other companies whose work is in one way or another connected with space.

I never planned to leave Russia. It just so happened that she got married. Her husband's family emigrated to New York back in the early 90's. Fortunately, I was not able to experience what the emigrants of those years experienced, who left the USSR forever. No drama: no one is now giving away his Russian passport and is not preparing for the fact that he will never again see his friends and relatives. I remember the fussy fussing with the paperwork, the collection of luggage, and then the numerous send-offs arranged for friends and relatives.

First arrival

In November, Houston met me with the sun, warmth and warm smiles of the natives. Traveling to hot countries, I had long suspected that the sun was disorganizing a person. Frivolity and gratuitous cheerfulness are characteristic of the inhabitants of the south (in large metropolitan areas, such as New York and Moscow, everything is completely different). Once again, I was convinced of this when I moved to Texas. Some state employees were especially amazed: she could not imagine a situation when an employee of a registry office first draws up a young mother with a newborn in her arms a birth certificate, and then, having given the document for signature, she grabs this baby and starts squeezing it. In Russia, I did not receive e-mails from an elementary school teacher, where my daughter studied, in which the first phrase would be: “Hello everyone! You know what? Life is Beautiful!". And the class teacher from the American school wrote this way.

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

And in general, I don’t like to talk about “terrible wild Russia and beautiful paradise America”.

After all, the whole thing is not a bad or good upbringing, but a difference of mentalities. When an American smiles, it does not mean that he is incredibly glad to meet you and waited for her all his life. Also, the Russian does not think about the wishes of health, saying: "Hello!". This is just a greeting, convention.
Wild prairie

As one of my American friends, who often travels to Russia, noted: “When I tell Russians that I’m from Texas, people think that I’m jumping on the prairies in a cowboy hat and with a lasso in my hand.” In fact, he speaks excellent Russian, traveled all of Siberia last year, collects old Soviet mailboxes and badges and loves our (in a broad sense) cuisine very much - he makes pilaf, samsa, bakes Russian pancakes. On the wild prairies here no one jumps, and they are not so wild.

Texas is very large - it ranks second in the United States by territory (after Alaska) and second in number (after California). It is interesting to travel around the state - there are German settlements and Czech ones, unique pure lakes and the ocean, plains and hills, deserts and caves. There are also many wineries and vineyards where wine tastings are constantly held.

Driving a car across America is a pleasure: even a long journey is carried easily, everywhere fresh food, salads and fruits. Along the road there are special recreation areas, everywhere clean toilets, in which there is always toilet paper in any village, even in the middle of nowhere. Sorry, but there was no toilet paper in the toilets of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory before my departure. I hope there is now.

Alligators on the streets

On the coast in Texas subtropical climate. There are alligators and sharks, poisonous spiders and snakes - they can all bite a little, so you need to be very careful. Armadillos and possums also live here, which, unfortunately, are mostly seen downed on the highways. You can also see alligators alive: if you are lucky, in a special reserve park, if you are less lucky, in a section of your own home or under your own car, as was the case with one of NASA employees. That year there was a severe drought, and the alligators were somewhat insane.

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

Animals are cherished here - coyotes, deer, ducks and other birds live in parks even in the urban area. If a nestling fell out of a nest near your house or you found an alligator in the backyard, you can call the special center and they will be taken away. In the center of NASA, located in a green wooded area, the birds once made a nest in the basket of one of the bicycles - they are standing in the space center so that employees do not drive from body to body. All of these bicycles were fenced off with a special yellow ribbon, one of those used by the police at the crime scene, so that the birds can safely raise their chicks.

Little Russia

There are not so many Russians in the cities of Texas as in New York, Chicago, Miami or San Francisco. But it is enough that they come together at meetings of the CSC (amateur song club), held in the woods near the picturesque lake near Houston twice a year.

The Russian Cultural Center also operates in Houston, and Russian-language newspapers are published, including Nash Texas. I work as an editor in it, so I will brag mercilessly. We do everything ourselves - we do advertising, we interview, plan a number, send newspapers to subscribers and advertisers, hang pictures before exhibitions and even, sometimes, we take out the garbage ourselves and tidy up the gallery and souvenir shop. Nobody is afraid of work here, everything was created on the enthusiasm of people who want the Russian diaspora to have its own cultural center.

The newspaper has been regularly published for 15 for years and is distributed free of charge in major cities of Texas: near Russian grocery stores, Russian-language schools, Russian doctors' offices and companies with many Russian-speaking people. It is said that when the publisher interviewed Mstislav Rostropovich many years ago during his visit to Dallas, when he heard the name of the publication, he was jokingly amazed: "Is Texas ours already?"

The Russian diaspora lives rather sparsely: everyone has a job, a family, and a circle of friends. But at the same time, many people know each other and after a big metropolis you feel as if you are in a pretty little village.

It is curious to meet people whom I would never have met while living in Moscow. All of them moved here at different times from the many cities of our once immense homeland. There are people from Armenia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan. Someone went to 90 “on the Jewish line”, a lot of scientists and translators working for oil companies and the space center.

It is especially interesting to talk with veterans who went through the war, and by their old age were here in America. Events at the Russian Cultural Center are a great opportunity to see, visit an exhibition of a compatriot artist, a musical evening or watch new Russian documentaries that are shown during the documentary film festival. But, of course, not only representatives of the Russian-speaking population go to our center. It was here that I truly became proud of my country, the culture that Americans are so interested in, and folk crafts.

Living in Russia, you don’t notice all these nesting dolls, Gzhel and Khokhloma, but when you see how enthusiastically Americans look at such souvenirs, or how hard they learn Russian, when they visit our school, you start looking at your homeland differently. Many Americans who come to our exhibitions say that, having visited Russia, they fell in love with her at first sight. Are there people here who do not like Russians? I am sure that yes. But, as you understand, they do not attend the Russian Cultural Center.

Icicle palm trees

The heat here is for six months, and we bathe in the ocean from April to October. During the hot, humid summer, many find it difficult, especially for the elderly. But there are air conditioners everywhere, and if you make your way in short rushes — from home to car, from car to shop, you can live. In addition, the body gets used to the heat, and with a cold snap in plus 10 Celsius really begins to shiver. However, the winters are short and warm, when a couple of times the temperature drops below zero and icicles hang on the palm trees, this is perceived as a natural disaster.

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

Photo: Dinara Gutarova

There are plenty of natural disasters here too: apparently, you have to pay for good weather. Houston is constantly hit by hurricanes and floods. I haven’t seen a hurricane yet, but this year I found a great flood that took the lives of many people in the whole state. In Houston, flooded parts of the city that have not been flooded for more than 20 years. Many homeowners did not even have flood insurance, which is mandatory for most parts of the city. I witnessed manifestations of mutual aid. Representatives of charitable organizations came to the victims, brought drinking water, food and cleaning products to clean the house after the water receded. Neighbors also came, even residents from other districts of the city came, and small children brought their piggy banks, wanting to give the accumulated money to people left without shelter. Russian-speaking residents of the state also helped each other, collecting money to affected friends and acquaintances through social networks.

Some Russians in America find it hard to get used to the lack of commodity-money relations with traffic cops.

The police do not take bribes, although they can forgive a violation of the goodness of their soul or because they are lazy.

And they can not forgive. Many of my friends from Russia, who received fines for reckless driving while traveling in Western Europe and America, were very indignant that it was impossible to “agree on the spot”. I was always amazed and amazed at the readiness of the Russians to pay tribute to the traffic cops even when they did not violate anything. And this is in addition to the regular payment of taxes.

We have a comic story connected with the policeman, which happened a couple of months after the move. The husband drove his daughter to school, he was stopped for speeding. Although we didn’t have our car in Moscow, the 9-year-old child learned that if a traffic cop stops, you have to pay a bribe. And when the husband got out of the car to get a bag with documents from the trunk, the daughter asked (fortunately, in Russian): “Dad, are you after the money?”.

Start over

The worst thing about immigration is the feeling that everything will have to start from scratch. But at the same time, this is an incredible drive. Having made a career in our homeland, we become hostages of our achievements and titles, which everyone speaks for us. Few people get the chance to “zero out” and again prove what he is capable of, and this is very stimulating.

At the moment when the husk flies, you turn from an experienced professional into an immigrant with bad English and immediately understand a lot about yourself.

This is a very useful, albeit unpleasant experience - to feel like a fool. As our former compatriot, journalist and writer Mikhail Idov once said: “It feels like you have suddenly become more stupid. It seems that you understand what they are saying to you, but you only write a witty answer in an hour and a half. ”

America is a country of “those who come to the public”, everyone here speaks with some accent. Therefore, you get rid of such complexes very quickly, even in the free language courses of the ESL program, where you learn to understand classmates from China and Bangladesh, who, like you, think they speak English. And you stop worrying about the fact that "how can I, an adult aunt, go and learn?"

Here they sit at the student’s desk and change their profession before retirement (and sometimes after), so you have great opportunities in 17 years, and in 80. In my group, by the way, the age range was from 20 to 80 years, and the African-American woman 70 was going to study further, “because she does her homework with her grandchildren and lacks education.” And our daughter's school teacher used to be a computer programmer, and then, being a mature man, he got a new profession: he went to work in school to be closer to his daughters.

Of course, not everyone can make a career in America. Especially difficult for those who did not come at a young age. I, for example, have a humanitarian profession — simpler to say, useless. What to do in this country “a broad profile intellectual”, as Sergey Dovlatov wrote? However, the success of the representatives of the Russian diaspora is incredibly inspiring. What are our hardworking, bright and interesting compatriots! What amazing, charismatic women who managed to build a business here and raise children. Of course, everywhere, in any country there are downsides. But paying attention to them is a waste of time. Our friend traveling around America on a motorcycle was robbed when he drove through Houston. He stayed in the city for a couple of hours, but now he thinks that this is the most terrible place on Earth. In general, it's all about luck and perception.

“Mom, why are there so many people with disabilities”?

The child asked me this question when I went to school. My daughter was surprised that many children with disabilities study at her school, while they were not at the Moscow school. I had to explain that Russian disabled people sometimes could not even get out of their own apartment, as they live in a house without an elevator, not to mention getting to the school, the nearest store, and even more so to go on a trip.

Looking at the life of pensioners here, I immediately remember my parents. They live in Moscow for a tiny retirement, although both have the title of labor veterans. With resentment, you think about all our Russian grandparents, who are barely making ends meet. Local retirees are not even aware of such problems.

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