My name is Joanna. I was born in Zamosc, Poland. I came to Minnesota, US, when I was five. I remember a few things about Poland before I came over. Our home was owned by my grandma, and she left it to my parents — when she left for America. And so we lived in there and we had a brick, two story house. My parents had chickens and a pig, and they had a farm in the back. They had vegetables and all sorts of stuff they were growing. I helping them in the garden. There was a big willow tree in the yard that was my favorite — it had a swing on it.
I remember when we left for America, our family drove us to the airport. My grandma and her brother came to Minnesota, I’m not sure why – but, one family (came to America) at a time, so it was first my uncle on my mom’s side, his family. So he went there, he moved there with his family, and then a couple years later, my aunt and her family moved. And then a couple years after, it was me and my family, so we sold the house and moved.
It was my dad, my mom, my two sisters. That was it. I don’t know why my my grandma picked Minnesota, specifically. I know that it was mainly because of the economy, and there wasn’t much work. My mom was a teacher, but my dad did some kind of construction in Poland and there wasn’t much work for him. [It was] 1995 when we came. The extended family dropped us off at the airport. The flight over was pretty traumatizing. It was strange, and I remember the first part, it was a Polish airline, but then we had to switch, and when we switched, everyone spoke a different language. I had never heard a different language before. So to me, I was shocked. I pressed the call button by accident and the flight attendant came over and she yelled at me in a foreign language and that freaked me out. I cried, so…
Then my grandma and my mom’s family met us at the airport. They had rented out a house in Northeast Minneapolis for us. My sisters were held back a year, because they went to school in Poland, but I went to kindergarten right away and didn’t know any English. I cried a lot, every single day remember, I cried. My sisters were struggling themselves with English so they couldn’t help me, but there was a girl in the eighth grade that spoke Polish. They would call her over and mentor me.