CHAPTER 10
Smiling at strangers? I’m a long way from home…
I remember the day I left Russia for America. My mum was crying her eyes out at the airport and I knew saying goodbye to her was going to be tough, but I didn’t realise quite how upsetting it would be. In my heart I knew I was making the right decision, this was my dream, but saying goodbye to my mum, my aunt and Grandad Boris, and my best friend Irina in a dreary airport surrounded by lots of people bustling by was very hard. I tried to reassure myself that not only would I be able to make a good living in America, I would be able to help my mum out financially, too. It was a big part of why I agreed to go, the potential to make money for my family was too good an opportunity to turn down. But even with that sensible idea in my head, it didn’t make waving goodbye to Mum any easier. And not knowing when I might see her again was especially hard. But I boarded that flight and that was that, next stop Seattle! It was time to find out if I had just made the best or worst decision of my life…
The moment the plane touched down in Seattle I knew I was going to be OK. Brian and his family – his mum, dad and brother Sean – were all waiting for me at the arrival gates with a big poster that said ‘Welcome To America’ and balloons and they were waving an American flag, too. It was very sweet, and right from day one they made me feel part of their incredibly warm, wonderful family. For me the one scary thing was that I could only say my name. I couldn’t speak any English so even though they made me feel welcome inside, I couldn’t thank them or talk to them and therefore settle into their world completely. Kathy, Brian’s mum, was a school teacher so she spoke very slowly to try and communicate with me but it didn’t really do much good at first, so we used signs and pointing to convey what we needed to. And I could not understand his dad at all – Ron had a very typical thick American accent and Brian and Sean were young and used a lot of slang, which meant I didn’t understand them either for a long, long time. But they were so good to me; they took me around Seattle the first day I arrived and I remember it was a beautiful warm day. They had a wonderful house in West Seattle overlooking the sea and you could see the port and the cargo ships coming in.
I remember spotting a ship with a Vladivostok logo on it from one of our shipping companies and I felt like I was at home! It was a good feeling and I rang my mum to let her know I had arrived safely and that I could see the sea and how lovely Brian’s family were. She told me she hadn’t slept since I left and how lonely she was in the flat without me, which I didn’t really want to hear as it just made me feel terribly sad. I told her I loved her and we would speak again soon and then I tried to focus on my new life.
The next day we went to the dance school and started our first round of rehearsals. That was it! There was no time like the present, I was there for a reason, and so we got on with training straight away. The first couple of weeks were very exciting – we were meeting new people but I was still a little overwhelmed by it all as I was sometimes struggling to work out what was going on, and I think I spent most of my time pointing and nodding a lot! But it didn’t take me long to understand the basic stuff, like whether I wanted food or needed a drink, and then Julia got in contact with me and we arranged to have some lessons with her and Bob in Arizona in those first few weeks, too. That was exciting! I was really looking forward to seeing Julia and speaking Russian with someone.
It’s funny how language can be such a barrier. However hard you try to communicate in different ways, not speaking to a person can make you feel very isolated. Sometimes it’s not just day-to-day communications that are the problem, it is expressing thoughts or feelings. At times I just wanted to say that I wanted to be alone with my thoughts but how can you express that?
In those first couple of weeks I met a lot of Brian’s friends and apparently they all asked him if I was upset about something. Brian said I was fine but they weren’t convinced because they couldn’t understand why I was not smiling! It was very strange and Brian did try and explain to me that in America, people just smile – at strangers on the streets even, or if you are in a shop. I found that very strange and I remember one day just walking down the road and I saw a couple of women walking their dogs and they were smiling at me. ‘This is so weird,’ I thought. ‘In Russia you just don’t do that, especially to random strangers. It would be very odd!’ But Brian explained that this is what people do in America and you have to smile otherwise they think you are upset or being rude and you didn’t want to be perceived as a rude person. Well, that was a big culture shock but I certainly didn’t want to walk around with a big smile on my face the whole time, it felt very unnatural and weird! Brian kept telling me it was a polite thing to do, but I just couldn’t do it. When I told my mum she didn’t get it either.
In those first few months I wrote to my mum a lot and, looking back at my letters now, I can see just how sad and lonely I must have felt. I did admit to her that I was finding it very hard being away from home and I didn’t know if I could stay there much longer. I don’t like to admit defeat in anything but I felt so alone. Of course to begin with it was exciting, but the reality soon hit that I was a foreigner in a strange country and I had no friends or family either. I think Americans are under the impression that people long to move to the States and people have to be happy when they are here as they are moving to this wonderful country. Don’t get me wrong, Brian’s family were wonderful. I felt loved and accepted and I will always be grateful to them as they made me feel so welcome and part of their family.
But I was scared of going to the shop – if someone asked me something, I wouldn’t know what to say. So in a way, I spent more time with Brian than just rehearsing and dancing as I relied on him a lot. Every morning he drove us to rehearsals, where we would learn our routines and then, as he was teaching in the afternoon, he would drive me home and afterwards go back to school for his class. I wanted to feel useful and as his mum and dad both worked and Sean was at college, I decided to use my time alone cooking and cleaning. And they loved my cooking – I just used whatever I could find in the fridge and it made me feel like I was pulling my weight, too.
Kathy was such a wonderful mum; she was always putting everyone else’s needs ahead of hers. She would come home after long days at the school where she worked, a school for children with behavioural difficulties, and then cook the dinner or do the laundry and tidy up and then do paperwork. I don’t know when she slept! So if there were any little things I could do to help, I would do. She once caught me doing all the dishes and tried to explain they had a dishwasher. Well, I had never seen a dishwasher before so I didn’t have a clue! I didn’t know what it was or how to use one so they had to teach me.
They also tried to help me learn English, too. I had brought a lot of books over from Russia to try and help with the language and I found reading a good way to learn. Every evening they insisted I watch a film with them and they would put the English subtitles on so I could read and watch. I was dreadful at writing and spelling in English but I could read it OK and it helped me learn to speak it, too. They also enrolled me in a specialist school where English was taught as a second language, but as it was an evening class and we were in training a lot, it didn’t really work out. I had to rely on a lift to and from the classes so I only went for about a month in the end. Speaking gradually became a bit easier as I was constantly picking up words from listening to conversations. And then I started teaching, which helped. I began with only a couple of lessons a week but it gave me a bit of confidence, too. Brian and I also taught together as a couple. We would teach salsa as it was very popular in America and lots of the community colleges offered these classes. It was fun! I hadn’t ever danced salsa before whereas Brian loved it, and he took me to salsa clubs to show me what it was like. It was like a Dirty Dancing experience! Honestly, I was like the Baby character, sitting in the corner watching all these people shaking their bits at each other. I was used to very rigid, very strict techniques, and this was just fre
estyle, which I hadn’t done a lot of before. At first I was adamant I wasn’t going to do that sort of dancing – it just wasn’t me – but eventually the music got to me. It is so infectious, you can’t sit still when it’s on, and so I started to dance it. You could say I had ‘The Time of My Life’!
With the help of Julia and Bob, Brian and I started putting routines together. It was a little challenging to begin with as our style of dancing was very different – he had a very freestyle, salsa rhythm and I came from a strong ballroom and Latin background, which was very structured. And I had been competing since I was six or seven years old, taking part in fairly big competitions all over the world, whereas Brian started dancing socially and fell in love with it, but taking part in competitions was a relatively new experience for him. He had actually only done a few competitions and those were in the past couple of years at a local level so our experiences of being judged were very different, too. I think I had assumed he had a similar background to me, and we certainly didn’t discuss it when we met in Vladivostok as he was only with me for three days.
So seeing Bob and Julia would be a huge help as they would be able to put our routines together and merge both our styles effectively. There weren’t many professional dancers in Seattle then. There were a lot of amateurs and a lot of kids wanting to learn, but it wasn’t a massive scene for professional dancers. Most of them lived in the big cities like Los Angeles, New York and Boston and the only other competitive couple that we knew of in our area was two teachers.
It’s funny, even though my grasp of the English language wasn’t brilliant, there was no misunderstanding the icy vibe I received from the woman when we met. Maybe she was upset that there was another couple to compete with in what they saw as their territory, their dance studio, and she was jealous, but whatever the reason she wasn’t very friendly at all. It did make me feel quite upset: already I felt vulnerable being in a different country and the last thing I wanted was to be made to feel unwelcome at the dance rooms. But she wasn’t subtle in her dislike for me, she didn’t talk to me and she looked down on Brian and me, too. Brian realised it as well but he wasn’t at all bothered. ‘Don’t mind, don’t care!’ he would tell me. ‘Just be the best we can be, forget them.’
I remember they asked me if Brian and I would be taking part in one of the competitions that was coming up in Seattle – I think they must have been worried we would be going up against them in the same category. It occurred to me that the woman could see potential in us as a couple and she was jealous that we might be a better pair. I wasn’t at all surprised – there is a lot of jealousy in the world of ballroom dancing because it is so highly competitive. But I was always brought up with the idea that I just had to concentrate on being the best I could be. In Russia our teachers kept drumming into us the idea that you couldn’t think about anything else other than who you are as a dancer. This is what people will judge you on, your skills on the dance floor, and if you do your best then your work will speak for itself. But it seemed the world of professional dancing wasn’t just about being an amazing dancer: there was quite a lot of politics and bribery involved, too. Unfortunately, Brian and I learnt the hard way that our dedication to training and rehearsals wasn’t going to win us any medals unless we ‘played the game’.
CHAPTER 11
Happy holidays – the American way!
Brian and I didn’t take part in the competition in Seattle as it was too early for us to be competing and we didn’t want to rush, so instead we flew to Arizona to see Bob and Julia. It was lovely to see her and reminisce about growing up in Russia and our childhood. And it did make me realise how much I was missing home – my friends and family of course, but also my culture and simple things like the food. I felt quite nostalgic about lots of things, and I spoke Russian for the whole weekend we were with Julia, which was great. The lifestyle that Bob and Julia had was inspiring. They lived in a beautiful big house, had fast cars and a wonderfully big dance studio – all from being champions and very famous in their world.
‘I could be like this, too,’ I thought. ‘I could be this successful and make my move to America worthwhile. I just have to keep training, to keep doing my best.’
Brian felt the same but he took it too far: he put the dream of being the next Bob and Julia on such a pedestal that it ended up putting too much pressure on us as Brian and Kristina. He wanted to be them so much it ended up overshadowing everything we did and what was an aspiring dream to begin with soon became an addiction.
But the weekend away in Arizona did motivate us both and Julia and Bob worked on our routines and encouraged us to start doing a few smaller competitions. It was the only way to practise our routines properly and work out what the judges liked or what we could change. We went back to Seattle full of enthusiasm and determined to do well. Brian was paying for everything at that time – I wasn’t earning a lot teaching the few lessons I did and he was so caught up in the idea of us being champions that he put all of his money, all of his savings, into us as a dance couple. He wanted to give everything he had for the chance to be a champion and I have a lot to thank him for. He brought me to America and changed my life and at no point lost any enthusiasm or focus on his goal.
A wonderful boy, he was raised in a very good family, a family for whom the children were everything. Ron and Kathy lived their lives through Brian and Sean and they were both so giving in every single way. It must have been difficult for them and a lot of responsibility, too, having me live with them. They were driving me everywhere and paying for everything but they never, ever made me feel like I owed them anything. They always made me feel so loved and welcome and like a daughter really.
It was a beautiful time for me: all those years I had longed for a proper family with proper parents and here was one with so much love to give. For the first time since I had moved out of my grandparents’ flat when I was twelve years old, I felt happy and settled. But boy, did I have a lot to learn about the American culture! Christmas is a good example. I just could not for the life of me understand why they started putting up the Christmas tree in the middle of December. In Russia, Christmas is a religious holiday, and in Orthodox Christianity, Christmas is 7 January. So our main holiday is really New Year’s Eve and we call our tree a New Year tree. We put it up and put all our presents underneath it on New Year’s Eve. And then after midnight we give each other our presents to celebrate new beginnings, new life, a new year.
An American Christmas is very different. When they brought the tree home and they kept calling it a Christmas tree, I kept calling it a New Year tree and they were laughing at me. So I tried to explain how it worked in Russia and they were trying to explain how it worked in America! But it was a lot of fun and every year I lived with them we celebrated both their Christmas and the Russian Christmas, which was very kind. And boy, was I spoilt rotten on my first Christmas! They completely showered me with presents. I woke up on Christmas Day to find these amazing parcels, all beautifully wrapped, and a day filled with such delicious food. I thought I would end up the size of a big turkey myself, the amount I ate!
Over the years my mum came for Christmas and it was always special to have her be part of the celebrations. It was very calming and it did feel like we were one big happy family. She would come over for a good two or three weeks and it was nice to have her around and we made sure we did plenty of traditional Russian cooking for the family, which they absolutely loved. Christmas was such a big occasion for them. Kathy had boxes of different ornaments that she would put up everywhere and the whole house would be covered! Everything was full-on.
I soon realised that Americans didn’t do things by halves at Christmas. Brian would put together a nativity scene that would take up the whole table and he’d buy a new piece for it each year so it just grew and grew. And Ron would put up all these lights outside the house that seemed to light up the whole street. It wasn’t just Brian’s family, though – everyone seemed to get into the spirit of Chri
stmas. We would drive around the neighbourhood and see all the houses with lights and it was magical. I never saw anything like that in Russia. It was completely different, and Mum loved it, too. I have so many happy memories of Christmastime with Brian’s family, which is something that I don’t really have from my childhood. I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t really remember many happy ones in Russia. For Brian and his family, it was spending time together and being happy that made it special. I will be forever thankful for those memories.
While being part of a family was just what I needed, it made me realise how much I could help my own family, too. As soon as I came to America I went to the bank, opened an account and had two cards made. I then Fed-Exed one over to my mum so she could go and take any money she needed from my account. Any money I earned, from a little bit of teaching, say, I could put into that account and she could use. It was all about supporting my mum for I knew what a tough life she had. As an athlete you are quite selfish by nature – you go where the competitions are, where you can concentrate on being the best, wherever that may be – and your family can be left behind. But they are your family and they don’t ever complain. I moved to the States purely to follow my dancing dream, so yes, it was a selfish move because it was what I wanted to do.
I remember I had been in America about a year when I travelled back to Russia to visit my mum and my aunt. By then I was quite homesick so I needed to go back to my own world, if that makes sense. But I didn’t realise until I landed just how comfortable I had become with life in America. It hit me straight away: how could I have forgotten how different and difficult life in Russia is? It is a different world to America. Everything is a struggle in Russia, people will do anything they can to make ends meet and support their families.
Dancing Out of Darkness Page 8