By Aline Mendelsohn
Sentinel Staff Writer
November 17, 2004
The little things confused Cristina Lucas the most.
The sign on the bus-stop bench that said "bench for sale." She thought the
bench, itself, was for sale, not the advertising space on the bench.
For months, she couldn't understand why anybody would want to Adopt-A-Road.
Lucas, 29, went through the universal immigrant experience when she left Romania
in 1997. It inspired her to start a Web site filled with immigrant stories from
all over the world, sentimentalrefugee.com.
She recently spent two months traveling the country -- from her home in Southern
California to Seattle, through Montana, to Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and
finally Orlando -- to collect stories of the immigrant experience for the site.
Many of the stories she found are like her own.
Welcome to America
Some people grow up always wanting to live in the United States.
Lucas was not one of those people.
Her brother was. He moved to California 11 years ago. Lucas decided to visit him
for three months in 1997.
As she stood in line at customs after a 10-hour journey across the Atlantic, she
suddenly panicked. What if the officials decided they didn't like her face? What
if the guards searched her bags and found the aspirin in her first-aid kit and
thought it was an illegal drug?
To Lucas' surprise, the customs official was friendly. He even smiled at her.
Lucas soon fell in love with America, with the can-do attitude, the spirit of
independence and the kindness that she says permeates the country. She decided
to stay.
Though the Web site's main purpose is to document the immigrant experience, the
site also offers practical advice, answering questions such as: What is an ATM?
How does health insurance work? What is a credit check? Do you need your
passport to cross from state to state?
The site also delves into the nuances of dating in America.
Katja Dreyer, who related her experiences on the site, remembers being flummoxed
by the dating slang when she came to the United States from Germany to study at
a travel school. Dreyer, 28, says it took her months to figure out the
difference between "dating," "dating exclusively" and "going out."
Stories, however, make up the bread and butter of sentimentalrefugee.com.
First-, second- and third-generation immigrants from all over the world have
shared their stories on the site.
Jay Lee, 37, is the product of a Chinese man who fled his country after World
War II and a blond, blue-eyed Californian. He always felt like an outcast
because of his mixed ethnicity.
"The smaller this world gets, the more important it is that people start to
understand differences," Lee says in a phone interview. "Cristina is tapping
into people as people, as opposed to a statistic or a green card."
Aline Mendelsohn can be reached at amendelsohn@orlandosentinel.com or
407-420-5352.