What has changed in my life after moving from Kiev to Washington - ForumDaily
The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.
Переклад цього матеріалу українською мовою з російської було автоматично здійснено сервісом Google Translate, без подальшого редагування тексту.
Bu məqalə Google Translate servisi vasitəsi ilə avtomatik olaraq rus dilindən azərbaycan dilinə tərcümə olunmuşdur. Bundan sonra mətn redaktə edilməmişdir.

What has changed in my life after moving from Kiev to Washington

2 years after moving from Kyiv to Washington, we still haven’t learned how to measure the weather in Fahrenheit, but we easily switched to pounds and believe that such weight packaging is much more convenient. Especially for small families. Cash has finally disappeared from the house and the ice that we add to water and too hot tea has become firmly entrenched - yes, there is such a sin. In the USA, our Jewish-Slavic faces are considered more exotic than a mixture of a Pakistani and a Korean whose grandmother is half French, half the daughter of a native of New Guinea.

Washington. Photo: Depositphotos

Washington. Photo: Depositphotos

I moved into an empty place - into an apartment without furniture, dishes or food. By the time I moved to Washington, I had two friends. It was from them that I first learned about the rule: meetings and trips to visit are discussed in advance. Even if you are close friends, a knock on the door at night and a request for some tea can only happen for a very good reason. If it is not there, they agree in advance and certainly not on the same day. The same situation is with any of the experts and analysts - their schedule is so tight that a 15-minute window may not be found not only today, but also tomorrow, even if you ask very hard.

Evening meetings with friends or brunches with girlfriends are planned based on 2-3 hours for everything and they won’t be offended if you have further plans. It’s the same story with cancellations of an entertainment program: only emergency work or illness are good enough reasons to reschedule the meeting from day to day.

We have no money at home - at least they are not in a special box, as was the custom in Kyiv. Occasionally, from 5 to 20 dollars “run through” my pockets, accidentally stuck after lunch with friends. Firstly, it’s easier to control your expenses: all transactions and their details can be viewed on the bank’s website. Secondly, a stack of even the smallest bills causes bewilderment and often the question: are you a drug dealer?

We learned how to write checks to pay rent and repay debts, and how to keep electronic accounting. Cash is needed to go to a nightclub or a family restaurant that, for personal reasons, does not accept cards. One day, in a small town near the largest American telescope in the Shenandoah Mountains, we saw an old-fashioned credit book in which salesmen wrote down the names of visitors and the amount of their debt. There are up to 2 thousand residents in the town, credit cards do not work due to the lack of Internet - this is dictated by the specifics of the telescope's functioning. And credit books - please.

In markets in the deepest American wilderness—Ohio, Montana, Idaho, and Tennessee—farmers took my credit card without a shadow of a doubt. Zip - and it's done: a check with the amount and wishes for a good day from the employees of the Kervel cheese factory, the O'Neill and Sons tomato farm, or the Pervenets pickled vegetable production company instantly appeared in the mail.

Фото: Depositphotos

Фото: Depositphotos

You can leave home without a wallet, take an Uber or Lyft to any point in the city to buy groceries, pay there using an electronic wallet on your phone, and return in the same way. The driver, the car and the products in the store are real, the money is invisible and electronic. Cashless payments in taxis or transport services are a completely ordinary story, in comparison with the native Kiev. The taxi driver will calculate according to the meter, the pricing of the cost of the trip depends on travel time, city traffic and mileage, but not on the mood of the driver.

We continue to transfer money in hryvnia and follow the course - this internal mathematics is the hardest thing to eradicate from yourself. Therefore, when I buy an Ikea chair for $7, I am as happy as a child - my Kiev furniture cost me much more, but looked about the same. This, however, does not stop me from staring at the expensive bookshelves at Crate and Barrel for the second year now - they cost about $1300 without taxes. That's almost a month's payment for an inexpensive apartment in the Washington suburbs or a down payment on a car. In short, I know many ways to spend this amount and am glad to have a choice. The shelves are still in the store.

Taxes and Salaries - a completely different story. In Ukrainian reality, we are used to negotiating a monthly salary with the employer; here we discuss the annual salary - with and without taxes, the number of working hours per week, the cost of overtime and its undesirability. By Ukrainian (and my personal) standards, a salary of $80 thousand a year is an absolutely huge amount, and if you receive it, you will feel like a real American rich man. But you won’t receive it right away - every 2 weeks in equal amounts, without taxes.

Taxes - about 30%. The total remains about 56 thousand per year. We divide them into 12 months - about $4700 per month. This amount still seems impressive. We subtract the rent from it - from $2200 for a 1-room apartment in Washington, from $1800 for the same one, but in the suburbs. There is still money left. The golden rule of American grandmothers is to save 30% of the loot, that is, about $800. Pay utility bills - about $100, telephone - the same $100, internet - about $90, don't forget about health insurance - from $150 to $400 per month, depending on the employer's benefits package. Buy groceries - about $120-150 a week, calculate the rest, remembering buying clothes, going out for wine with friends... And get sad. Not all Americans are wealthy, the streets are not paved with gold, money does not grow on trees - they are simply used to pay in stores. And believe me, they know the price of every dollar earned.

Фото: Depositphotos

Фото: Depositphotos

With a fast and busy life, here they are trying to make their life as simple as possible: Most rental apartments will definitely have an old but working dishwasher - my favorite house slave. Laundry is not hung from house to house on lines - dryers are used instead. Along with washing machines, they are just a rarity in rented apartments - you use a public laundry. Washing is a serious process: you leave the laundry and the laundry instantly “gone” in an unknown direction.

Another story is tap water. It is offered in restaurants, drunk at home and from fountains located in parks, schools and offices. As for me, it smells of bleach no less, and perhaps even more than Ukrainian.

Another distinctive feature: Any drinks served with an incredible amount of ice. Even in winter. The salespeople at the 7/11 store recognized me as a non-local almost immediately, before I even had time to open my mouth: I grabbed a glass of cola and did not add ice to it. Resident's mistake - Americans definitely won't do that.

Фото: Depositphotos

Фото: Depositphotos

In America, for the first time in the last 18 years, I ate sausages, a “chicken” cutlet, and—for the first time in my life—“lard.” All vegetarian, no animals were injured. Vegetarians here are also considered people to whom nothing human is alien. Even if it's a slice of soy turkey, ice cream without milk, or a veggie burger.

In Kyiv “in the area”, that is, Podol, I had Greek, Serbian and Turkish restaurants, a French cafe, “Italians”, “Georgians” and even “Cubans”. A couple of hipster coffee shops, a sex shop, a car wash and the beloved Zhitny Market. Here - “Spaniards”, “Chinese”, “Mexicans”, “Italians” and “Starbucks” on the corner. I don’t have a car, the market is only on Sundays. Unlike Ukrainian, local prices are higher than in expensive organic grocery stores. The local bazaars are a little like languid Italian, noisy Spanish and french in any weather.

American farmers and cheese makers with red faces, red hands, beards and earflaps will definitely put out sliced ​​apples or cheese for testing; there is no feeling of a holiday. People are busy: some came for shopping, others brought goods. I go to the market for goat cheese, which is delicious and creamy like oysters. The only difference is that it's cheese. Also for pickles and turnips. They are sold by bearded Jewish men from New Jersey - their ancestors left Chernigov back in the 18th century. In short, I have a discount, and we always chat for a long time.

Once they asked me why I like America the most. I answered honestly: behind diversity - diversity of faces, mixture of races, cultures, the opportunity to bring a Senegalese husband to the United States and not run into resistance from the family. For all my friends with Japanese, Irish, German and God knows what other roots, for their accents and the fact that no one will look down on my mother talking to my friends using Google Translate. For the fact that within the same family we make Shabbat and celebrate Rosh Hashanah, buy Christmas gifts and light the lights on Hanukkiah, go to dinner parties with our Muslim friend - if only you knew how she cooks! - and we cheerfully troll our friend Clive, a parishioner of the Anglican Church, for his decision to convert to Judaism - the faith of his wife and children.

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