Redko

=Cristian Redko=

Podcast
media type="custom" key="12077333"

BIOGRAPHICAL/GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE
My interviewee was originally from Brazil. Her father died when she was 9, her mother remarried soon after they moved to Canada, where her mother was to studying to be an engineer. When she was in her upper teens she moved back to Brazil to go to school. Then as an adult she moved back to Canada and got her Ph.D. Later she had become unemployed and was living off lines of credit. She decided to move to America and get a job. Her first job, when she moved to America, was at Wright State University, on Research Park. Throughout her years there she has moved up to better positions in her field of work. She met her husband soon after she moved to America; they now have a five year old son. They have been married for eight years now. She has three citizenships, one to every country that she has had residence in. She got her American citizenship last May. She has visited Canada and Brazil several times, yet feels now that her place is in Dayton, Ohio. Canada and Brazil are both within the top ten largest countries in the world. Brazil has mainly tropical weather. It can have a lot of rainfall in a short amount of time and very little for a long period of time, it’s seasonal. It has the world largest rainforests and one of its largest rivers. It is the larger country in South America; its eastern coast is connected to the Atlantic Ocean. Canada is a country divided into several large states like America, such as French Canada and Quebec. Its eastern side was founded around the same time that the rest of America was being settled. An interesting thing about Canada is that it has social healthcare much like was trying to be push in the U.S not that many years ago.

=Creative Writing=

By: Noah Carrier
“Who is the current president of the United States?” the officer asked the question with a loud yet un-confrontational voice. His too long hair contradicting his neatly pressed uniform “President Obama” I responded without hesitation. “Correct, when was the state of Washington in incorporated into the United States?” He seemed to speak slowly so that I could understand what he said; he seemed to think that he was better than me. This was a tricky question, I was forced to think back to all of the studding I had done for this test last night. ”Well Washington was originally Washington territory which was next to Oregon territory and Washingtonbecame a state on the 11th of November in 1889” then when the immigration officer was silent for a moment I became worried that I had gotten the question wrong. “I….Is that right?” “Yes that is the correctanswer , good, when did the civil war start, end, and how long was it? The officer had lost his “I’m better then you” tone and had now a softer pitched voice, apparently he had not known the answer to the previous question himself and was trying to trick me. I knew this one very clearly,” The American Civil War lasted for about four years from 1861 to 1865. It began with the secession of the South from the Union on January 1, 1861. A very significant date is December 18, 1865, when there was the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution for the abolition of slavery.” I hope that I had not said it too fast for him. “ Congratulations god job Mrs. Redko you have successfully completed the U.S Citizenship test, Please continue on down the hall and into the main auditorium.” The guard seemed to have a sad tone in his voice that was still somewhat sarcastic. As I left another person took my seat and started taking the test. I walked down the huge, nearly over decorated, hallways, sadly I couldn’t look around and see all of the beautiful architecture, and the hallway was full of nearly a hundred people. Some were going this way some were going that way. It was like a room full of electrons, bouncing all over the place, never really getting anywhere. After several minutes of pushes and shoves I Had finally managed to get to the main cathedral hall, I found a seat and waited for my name to be called, so that I can go up on the stage and in a way swear in to the U.S. A. As I sit there, waiting for all the people who came in before me to finish what they came here to do, I think back to my how I had gotten to this point. ** …. ** My name is Cristina Redko I came to America eight years ago, looking for a job. Although, I would have never to come to the United States by personal choice. Though desperate times call for desperate measures. Anyway I have lived in the USA for more than eight years now. I had somewhat of a hard time…. Conforming to the way of life people have here. When I was living in Canada, for most of my adult life, people were usually very nice and it wasn’t very odd to find a place where there were people of every race speaking many different languages. But here you don’t have that; here everyone’s more separated and get noticed even more because I have an accent. America is a strange and wonderful place, it may not be as good as some places in Canada or Brazil, but it just has a sense of well…. Its home for me now, it’s where I fell that I now belong. In the eight years I’ve lived here I have gained many new friends, which I might add was particularly difficult due to the ages of my co-workers. One particularly special day to me was the day I met my husband, it was at one of the Wright state staff meetings, and as soon as we saw each other we knew it was meant to be. After a year or so together, we got married, and had a son the very next year. I was born in Brazil, my father was a Russian and my mother is a native born Brazilian. My mother has told me many fond stories of my father, though; sadly I was never able to create any of those stories for myself. For…. My father had passed away when I was no older than nine. I had a brother and a sister, both were younger then I was. My sister is currently living with my mother in Canada. My brother though, had followed in my father’s footsteps and killed himself not that many years ago. When I had no job in Canada I had decided to start sending my résumé to the United States, the first place that I started to send to was Wright state university. Which surprisingly enough was the first people that I ever got word back from, maybe I should have waited until other places I sent to got back to me, but I was desperate and was not willing to live any longer on my lines of credit. That’s how I ended up in America. Over my years here I have moved up in positions, from a researcher to a teacher, in the department of community health. I was shocked out of my day dreaming when my name was called by the man at the big table, a judge I believe. I stood up and began the lengthy walk down the aisle way, and up to the table in the front. As I got there the judge spoke in a kind mellow voice. “Cristina Redko?” “Yes, that’s me.”  That’s how it happened, that’s how I became a US citizen, that's how my new life begun.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
This is an interview with Cristina Redko. The interview was conducted on November 22, 2011, with Noah Carrier representing the Dayton Regional STEM School. After that we said our goodbyes and I thanked her for her time.
 * Noah Carrier:** What country did you come from before you came to America?
 * Kristina Redko:** I’m originally from Brazil, in South America.
 * Noah Carrier:** When did you move to America?
 * Cristina Redko:** Eight years now, November of 2003, but before coming to America (pauses while thinking). lived in Canada……for, as an adult I came to Canada in 1993, but also when I was a teenager, from 11 to 14, I lived in Canada because my mother went to study in Canada, from Brazil.
 * Noah Carrier:** What was she studying to be?
 * Cristina Redko:** ….. She was an engineer, and she had gotten a scholarship to do her masters in engineering in Canada, so she went and we kind of as kids had to follow her.
 * Noah Carrier:** OK, well what made you come to America?
 * Cristina Redko:** I… I have three citizenships, then, even though the United States does not, when I swore an American citizenship to the United States…. That’s an interesting story. I told the United States judge that I denied my previous Canadian and my previous Brazilin citizenship, but both Brazil and Canada do not accept, that me swearing to an American judge, means that I did renounce my citizenships, so I have to swear to a Canadian judge that I renounce my Canadian citizenship and I have to swear to a Brazilin judge that I renounce my Brazilian citizenship, so what happened was I will not swear that. So I’m keeping the three citizenships for life and now who taught me this trick was….an, American officer in the immigration offices. Because Canada and Brazil accept duo citizenship, but the United States does not, so now I told you all of the story, you asked me something about Canada, that right. I lost your question, because I told you all that, those stories about my citizenship, what made me come to America, was because I was in Canada and I’m highly educated, I have a Ph.D I have high degree, and I was looking for a job. I would never move to the United States but then I was unemployed for six months, living out of credit and lines of credit and you know I better start open my horizons, because I need to find a job and that’s how I first send, start sending, moves to the united states, and I ended up here at Wright state. On my first thing, it was really the first thing I sent was to Wright state, and I got here, I guess it was meant to be, ya.
 * Noah Carrier:** Did you have a hard time learning English, as a kid?
 * Cristina Redko:** ….When, I learned English when I was in Canada, I think that I was around eleven and it was, I was in sixth grade, and kind of in the beginning what I did is I bought a Portuguese/English dictionary. The Webster’s, on the pocket, I know you didn’t have very many computerized things those days. When, and people would talk to me ask questions, there were just, just too many words. It was just too complicated for me to understand, so I would just say yes or no. You know my vocabulary for the first few weeks, and then one day I learned the word perhaps. And I just loved that word. Because then if I was not sure if it was a yes or a no, I would say perhaps. Now can you imagine, I did get myself in some troubling situations because what I would respond was perhaps. Was that a yes or no, perhaps? I was not understanding what I was being told. But you know when you are young, At that kind of age you pick up a language very easily. It’s hard, the older you get the harder it gets. So I think within a month you could have. Because I was in school too, because if you immigrate to stay in your house it makes things harder. But within a month, I…. I picked up the basic skills and then I met, I did not need to repeat a year because of that, things like that.
 * Noah Carrier:** What type of governments did they have in the countries that you live?
 * Cristina Redko:** I was a republican.
 * Noah Carrier:** For both of them?
 * Cristina Redko:** Brazil is a republican government, Canada has the involvement of its parliament government, I don’t know how you would be calling it. Ordinarily you do have the, the queen of England as part of power but it’s just honorary. She really does not have any power against the firm lines of parliament. I forgot how you say it, I also lived in French Canada in Quebec.
 * Noah Carrier:** Where did you come into America at?
 * Cristina Redko:** Where did I do what?
 * Noah Carrier:** Where did you come into America at?
 * Cristina Redko:** I came first to Dayton, Ohio. Was that the question, was that right?
 * Noah carrier:** Yes, what was your first job in America?
 * Cristina Redko:** My first résumé was sent to Wright state and that was my very first job In United States. I’m here since then for the last eight years.
 * Noah carrier:** Did you always have this job here?
 * Cristina Redko:** I always worked in….the department of community health. Which is part of the Wright State School of Medicine, but, I always worked in this department, but my positions change. I started as a research scientist, and then I became a research assistant professor, now I’m an assistant professor. So it did change, my functions changed. Before I was just in the research position, and now I’m in mostly teaching and a little bit of research too, in the Master of Public Health Program.
 * Noah Carrier:** You said that you had a Ph.D when you were in Canada?
 * Cristina Redko:** Ya I did. I did it at McHale my Ph.D. McHale University, Montreal Canada.
 * Noah Carrier:** That’s more then I would have thought, well, I was, when we were talking about immigrant people, usually they were like…. Not very well educated. But you seem very well educated.
 * Cristiana Redko:** I have four degrees, and I work in that profession like. But some of my students are refugees and their very educated and their completely unemployed, and because of the, thererefugees. You know when you move countries, you kind and that how see, and I moved countries twice. That has been my experience, you kind of start all over from scratch. People kind of don’t recognize what you did in the past, so it doesn’t matter to them and for the Americans, that I have done research or teaching in Canada, or research or teaching in Brazil. It’s kind of ohhh you’re learning with us what you have to do, as if I have never done any of that anymore. It’s painful but you learn to live with that, you know?
 * Noah Carrier:** Did you have to take a citizenship test?
 * Cristina Redko:** Ya I did, I did that last May when I became a U.S citizen.
 * Noah Carrier:** Was it hard?
 * Cristina Redko:** No but I think it’s umm…uhh… because of my high level of education. So it was not hard for me, but I can see how it can seem to be hard for some people. The test is basically 100 questions and you basically have to memorize those 100 questions, they will ask you ten or those questions. If you get six questions right they don’t ask anymore, kind of. You’re allowed to get four wrong. So that was kind of the night before and the day after, typical student’s memorized questions and went into the test…. Would you be interests I can print it out for you. Let’s finish the interview and we’ll do that.
 * Noah Carrier:** Why did you want to work at Wright state?
 * Cristina Redko:** Well it’s who offered me a job. It wasn’t specifically that I want Wright State. Because kind of, I was trained to be a professor and to teach research and all that. It just happened.
 * Noah Carrier:** Why did you want to be a teacher?
 * Cristina Redko:** Why did I want to be a teacher, it excites me to be a teacher and you know what. At some points I ask myself, I would not be happy being a high school teacher, or a kindergarten teacher. In my country there are very low pay positions, it’s just very hard to live with that kind of salary. While if you are a university professor, you have a little bit of uhh… better pay and here I could have lived but I would not have all the couriers that came with an engineer…. Why does…. I don’t …. It’s hard to explain why, but it’s something that I love to do. To teach people things…. The exchange of ideas and having. I hadn’t thought. I was very unhappy not having a teaching position…….and just having a research position and even though I had people and all that, most of the time it’s just me and my computer and that really made me very depressed, you know. I need the interaction with people. I wanted you to interview me because that’s what I do for a living, so you know if you are all the time interviewing people and you’re teaching your students how to interview people, when someone wants to interview you, I just… should let them do so. I was always a teacher of sorts and did a bit of research before I came to America. It was always a university related job. I never got out of school in a sense.
 * Noah Carrier:** Did you ever have to leave anything behind when you moved to a different country.
 * Cristina Redko:** Well my family, my books, which was really painful for me. I’ve lost libraries along the way. I’m the typical professor with all those books and I’ve learned that I don’t need to have enough books. This is nothing compared to what I used to have. I had thousands of books and to travel with books you know is too expensive, so I’ve learned…. I have a friend and I think she always put it this way. Usually immigrants are very strong and there very flexible to change because the just put whatever they can inside a suitcase and leave and start all over again. You know it’s not easy, you have to make friends, create connections, it’s hard, and as you get older it gets harder. You know because other people have aged they already have their friends, connections, and family. It’s harder to open up and accept a new person. Not that because there bad people or wrong. It’s just because they already made their lives.
 * Noah Carrier:** What was it like when you first came to America? Was it hard to get used to everything?
 * Cristina Redko:** I think that I was more surprised when I came to Dayton, Ohio, how people noticed that I was a foreigner. With whomever I talked they would notice that I had an accent and they would ask where I came from. Without calling attention, because I lived in Canada in cities that were very multi- cultural. Where it’s the most common thing is that you have a person who speaks English, French, and the mother tongue for a language, and this is not as common in Dayton, Ohio. So everyone always asked me what’s my accent? If I’m in Montréal or Toronto they don’t care everyone has an accent. So without calling any attention to what I felt the first week, because the first impressions are very important. The first month or so when I arrived I didn’t have a car, I lived in cities where it was crazy for you to have a car. It was more trouble than worth and so I had to come here I had to get an ID I had to get a car. And so I did all that I was taking bus and everyone in my work said, but why do you take the bus? How are you going to use the bus? And that was when like why is the bus, and then I felt different sometimes I walk on the bus and the people always look at me and then I notice all the people around me were African Americans, and I said am…. In the wrong place or something? And to see that some neighborhoods were African Americans and other neighborhoods were usually all white. That was different, it was kind of different for me, just to observe. Now you probably notice that I have an accent, like when I say three (frees).
 * Noah Carrier:** What do you like about America?
 * Cristina Redko:** You know I just returned from Canada to live there and I loved Canada, when I just came back from Canada I said Ohhh, you know a piece of my heart will always remain in Canada. I have, and when I returned on last Sunday, I said it was nice to go back to Montreal; it was nice to see some very old friends, some of my old professors. You know it felt kind of gloomy and all and lifeless. Then I said, you know my life is not in Canada anymore, my life is in Dayton, Ohio. That’s where I met my husband that’s where I had my kid, my five year old son so life is here now. It’s interesting, the nostalgia of…. Montréal it’s one of the most wonderful places in the world. Kind of that’s my past that’s not my present. My present is like the fun I’m having with my students, the things I teach, seeing my five year old grow up, things like that.
 * Noah Carrier:** Isthere anything you don’t like about America?
 * Cristina Redko:** I don’t like the healthcare system. I think it should me a more socialized healthcare like Canada is. It saddens me how health despair is increasing in this country it wasn’t so much like that twenty or thirty years ago. Because this is one of the things that I don’t like about brazil, the country where I was born it was just a huge disparity between a majority of very, very poor people to a minority of very, very rich, wealthy people, with not much middle class in between. This is the reason that I left more than twenty years ago. This is not Brazil today, Brazil is doing a wonderful job today of eliminating the class of miserable, there not even poor, there were then that there miserable people, and that class has kind of been eliminated Brazil is increase in its middle class. So there is a lot of improvement, this was when I went to Brazil last Christmas and it was kind of neat to see that.
 * Noah Carrier:** Would you ever want to go back there, in one of those countries to live?
 * Cristina Redko:** I, you know moves once moves twice moves three times I’m OK with that I think my husband, he’s America, would have a more difficult time with moving, and then we also have his parents, that were kind of were getting older and we’re taking care of, so it would be harder for me to consider that. I’m kind of stuck here now.
 * Noah Carrier:** If you could bring back one thing from one of the countries that you used to live in what would it be?
 * Cristina Redko:** ….I think something that I miss and would want to bring from Brazil would be, people are just more warm and talkative, with “hello’s” and “goodbye’s” and I became very Americanized now. That was an interesting thing when I happened, when I went to brazil this year, were returning the car we rented and the lady, and she told me that in English not in Portuguese. You know you speak good Portuguese, but that’s all, now a’ days you act like American, you dress like American, so next time why don’t you bring you American passport to make your life easier. So I took on the bicultural identity, I really had Americanized myself, so whenever I go down to Brazil I have this clash. You know you’re too American you’re not Brazilian enough anymore and when I’m here I'm also, even though now I have the American citizenship, I’m not really seen as an American, I’m seen as a Brazilian. But what I miss from Brazil is the, how everyone, people come in the morning, everyone hugs and kisses each other, and how are you dudida, dudida. And here people come into their offices and there just too busy to get on to their work and I miss these little things. To just say” hi”, no, no, no you have your work friends and you have you family friends and you have this friends, and it’s really just too much, we’re just friends. Does that make sense?
 * Noah Carrier**: Did you ever have to change your name when you moved to a new country, to make it pronounced easier?
 * Cristina Redko:** My husband asked me to when we got married to change my name for the sake of my son so, and I regret that, but and when I became an American citizen by all mean that was after I married him, so when I became a U.S. citizen I changed the back, when you become a citizen, your able to change your name. But if I don’t then he will be so upset, so what I do I play with the names professionally I keep my own name and when it’s family things I use his name. It’s confusing but that’s what I do. My old name was Cristina Potsy Redko, that’s the name that you saw in my e-mail and that’s when I arrived here I was, I met my husband here, with a Ukrnian name it’s a Russian and I like to keep it for two reasons, my professional name so I have on my scientific papers give it that name and it’s a confusion when, then you change names and people why read your paper and want to find what other papers you did and its under another name, you don’t necessarily know that and it makes a confusion when you have a scientific name. The other reason is I lost my dad very early on in my life and that name is the only thing that I have left of him, so it’s a way to honor my father, to use the Redko name. And my husband name is Mier and it was written all the wrong way, when his grandfather immigrated to America, many people say it “mirror” and it sounds bad. So I just do not like his name. My mother’s family did like him, Brazil very much like the United States, was populated by immigrants, so I’m really a mix of all in some ways.
 * Noah Carrier:** How did you meet your husband?
 * Cristina Redko:** It was here in Dayton, Ohio he was the president of a photography club, and I just went to a meeting and this was just, I was trying to get to know people because I had just came to America. I was 30 or 40. It was love at first sight.
 * Noah Carrier:** Do you still keep your native culture?
 * Cristina Redko:** Not much, but I like to cook a lot of Italian because that was what my grandmother did to us growing up, not so much, Brazilian I cook when I do parties. But I don’t do it much because it can be hard to find some of the ingredients.
 * Noah Carrier:** How do you think that your family was in the class system?
 * Cristina Redko:** I think that we were the upper middle class, just because of your college education; I'm a third generation in my family that went to college.
 * Noah Carrier:** Do you have any brothers or sisters?
 * Cristina Redko:** I have a sister that lives in Brazil with two teen ager kids and I have a brother but he died. Ten years ago. I have mother and step father but they live in Canada, but I want them to move in with me. My brother fell out of his apartment and he was many stories up in the air. He had bad mental problems that were more like being bi-polar and one day he was being low and he just jumped over the edge.

ANALYSIS
In my U.S. History class we learned that people usually immigrated somewhere to escape harsh rulers, to find better jobs, to further dedicate themselves in school, to escape a war, to escape economic depression, or to free themselves from prejudice, racism, or segregation. When conducting my interview I found out that my interviewee had been out of a job for several months and threw this decided to come to America to find a job. We also learned in class that usually most immigrants were very poorly educated and had a very hard time finding a good life for themselves. My interviewee was very well educated with several Ph.D’s and several other degrees. My interviewee had several comments on this subject, “I have four degrees, and I work in that profession like. But some of my students are refugees and their very educated and their completely unemployed, and because of the, their refugees. You know when you move countries, you kind and that how see, and I moved countries twice. That has been my experience, you kind of start all over from scratch. People kind of don’t recognize what you did in the past, so it doesn’t matter to them and for the Americans, that I have done research or teaching in Canada, or research or teaching in Brazil. It’s kind of ohhh you’re learning with us what you have to do, as if I have never done any of that anymore. It’s painful but you learn to live with that, you know?” this is some ways that my interview compares to the subject criteria that we had learned in class. My interviewee was a very intelligent person and from her I learned that not all of the people that immigrate to America are bums of refugees.