Moving to the USA just before the crisis

mamun7745448 wrote:

Yes, it's really moving is the very serious matter now.

Yes

I had been living here but moved to a new state. I am a frontline worker in a nursing home so as horrific as it has been I am glad to have kept my job in capitalist USA.

I flew to the USA on the 19 March 2020 on one of the last flights before Lockdown. I was supposed to only leave South Africa in April 2020 so it was quite stressful having to leave 3 weeks earlier and I was unable to say goodbye to a lot of friends and family.
I came to the USA on a parent Visa and the whole process took just over a year. I live with my daughter and son-in-law in Maryland so I was fortunate in that way not to have to worry about finding my own accommodation and settling down in a foreign country. My daughter is a teacher and at that time, the schools closed indefinitely so my daughter was at home which also helped me to settle in far more quickly- I didn’t feel so lonely.
I had a lot of low periods for the first few months as nothing could get processed because of the Lockdown so no Social Security number therefore no employment, no Bank account, no driving license....Once that was allowed, I was the first in the queue to get my life going here. I was a Registered Nurse in South Africa and had expected to work as one here once I wrote the Exams but it wasn’t as easy as that. I learnt that I was expected to do hours in Hospitals too as I’d trained over 41 years ago and I decided I was too old for shifts etc. so dropped the idea.
Initially I worked in a medical office as a receptionist but there were no benefits so since November I have been working in a school as a Paraprofessional and loving it.
I also got my Learners and then Drivers License on first tries which is a huge achievement for me as in SA we drive on the left side of the road and I’d done that for 44 years!
Despite the Lockdown, my shipped crate of household and personal effects arrived on scheduled time, 3 months after I got here and that helped me settle in too.
I had hardly started working at the school, when the schools closed again because of rising Covid numbers and only really got going again in February so making friends has taken a lot longer than it normally would but I can now say that I have new friends!
Again I have been fortunate to see a bit of the USA and the area and absorb the culture here but that is thanks to previous pre Covid visits to the USA. Last summer, we didn’t really go anywhere and we all got Covid but recovered well.
Would I do it again if I knew what was going to be ahead? No, I don’t think so. But am I grateful to be in this country? Very much so!