[written over three train rides out of the city, a kind of ‘minz in america’ series about my first years in the states, for s. originally, but it occured to me that no one else knew this about me!]

’In 1999 I arrived in the US for my freshman year of college. Singapore-Amsterdam-New York went smoothly enough; at JFK I was at great pains to be polite to the border control official in case they didn’t let me in. There was some misunderstanding about my luggage (no through-checking off international flights) but I took care of that muddle in time. Towing the suitcase, I went to look for my next flight.

At the time I wasn’t to know cancellations were the particular bugbear of American air travel and entirely unremarkable. It had seemed wholly portentous of ill-beginnings to find myself all of a sudden without an onward flight: day one and stranded in an airport already! It seemed so very incredible and incompetent of such a very advanced country, and amazingly enough no one was falling over themselves to apologise. We are definitely not in Asia anymore.

It occured to me that what I desperately would like was a good cry and a safe place to do this in. For one couldn’t, of course, cry in the middle of an airport. One was almost-not-a-teenager-anymore! (It would be so glamorous when one day people asked your age and the answer started with 2- instead of 1-) In the end I found the ladies and wrestled my suitcase in with me. Then I sat on the suitcase and had a good cry. The vexation was double: 1) blasted blasted Americans who couldn’t run an airline properly! 2) But am I crying? I am almost a college student! How can my first response be to need a cry? But I did want a cry, and after that I felt much better. Then I told myself (and in those days I had to keep telling myself): nevermind, pretend this is an adventure, washed my face and got myself onto another flight.

So that was my first hour in the US. A slightly scared and very cranky teenager in an unfamiliar airport, sitting on a suitcase in a bathroom cubicle crying angry tears. I’ve not thought about that in years.

When I got to my dormitory I immediately felt like an orphan. I’d brought my worldly goods in my suitcase and no parent. All around me people were showing up with full posses of relatives. There was an especial abundance of fathers and brothers and uncles, in Lacoste shirts and khaki shorts (this was UVA; ‘preppy’ was not yet in my vocabulary) putting manly shoulders to the heave-ho of furniture. Now my own father is an elementary school science teacher, who is sweet, vague, sentimental, poetry-loving, hopelessly impractical, absolutely terrible at travelling, and, had he come to college with me, would not have been able to get a box up the stairs (bad back.) I began to miss him terribly.

I unpacked my one suitcase and went out to people-watch. A mother asked me where my family was. “This one came to school alone!” she said to her husband. “She says she’s from St Paul.” (My first year people misheard me all the time; I mumble.) It was more polite to nod and pretend (after all they wouldn’t see me again) but what do I know about Minnesota apart from what I learnt from Little House on the Prairie? So I had to say Singapore again, apologetically, and then smile modestly as they complimented on my good English for a foreigner, and asked how long it took me to get to school. (30 hours, or 36 hours with United’s delays.)

I fled to my room as soon as politely practicable and at once crawled into bed. (My bedsheets from home were too short for the extra-long mattresses.) My roommate was not arriving for a day or two and I had the room to myself. I was scandalously homesick for the next three months.