{"id":369,"date":"2017-03-17T13:41:35","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T20:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/?p=369"},"modified":"2017-03-17T14:24:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T21:24:43","slug":"a-tale-of-three-us-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/a-tale-of-three-us-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of three US cities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Sorina Szakacs talks to her parents in Romania while on campus at Los Angeles City College.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Growing up in Romania, Sorina Szakacs imagined\u00a0life in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad remembers that since I was in the fifth grade, I used to tell him I\u2019m going to live in the U.S.\u201d Szakacs said. \u201cI\u2019m going to move there.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, she did \u2026 three times.<\/p>\n\n

In 2004, Szakacs arrived in New York, as part of a student work program. As soon as she landed at JFK airport, she walked outside, sat on her luggage and smoked a cigarette.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States didn’t feel like a foreign place to me,\u201d Szakacs said. \u201cI felt at home from the first day, from the first moment I got here. I was in the airport. I didn’t even rush to call my parents. I didn’t call for the next three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sorina didn\u2019t call because she was too busy taking in the sights of the city. She was so excited, she couldn\u2019t sleep on her first night in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took 20 minutes of laying down in the bed and listening to the police, fire department and all kinds of cars on the street,\u201d Szakacs said.<\/p>\n

Szakacs got up, put on her clothes, left the room and went out to explore. Fighting jetlag, she stepped into a mini-market looking for something sweet to wake her up. She picked up a blueberry muffin in Times Square.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember taking the paper off and trying to take small bites while walking and I\u2019m like, \u2018I never eat on the street in my home country.\u2019 Nobody was watching me. That\u2019s what I like about the United States and one of the reasons why I felt like I was at home. Nobody cares.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sorina Szakacs recalls her first meal in the U.S. at McDonald’s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a summer of working at an amusement park on Long Beach Island in New Jersey, Szakacs headed back to Romania to finish school.\u00a0Five years later, she returned to the U.S. \u201cI couldn’t find my place, so I decided to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

This time, Szakacs flew to Chicago, where she was greeted by family, friends and the weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got outside and it was cold and windy and freezing and by the time my cousin came to pick me up, my hands were frozen, my face was hurting and I\u2019m like \u2018what did I do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Szakacs stuck it out in Chicago for four years. Then, she says, \u00a0\u201cthe first chance I had, I left.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, it was back to the airport for Szakacs where she headed west to Los Angeles to visit her best friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the first thing that hit me. It\u2019s December. It\u2019s the 30th and I\u2019m wearing short sleeves.\u201d<\/p>\n

No longer in need of a winter coat, Szakacs stopped at the iconic Los Angeles landmark: Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music, the craziness of Hollywood got to me,\u201d Szakacs said. \u201cI was like \u2018okay, I need to move to L.A. and I want to live in Hollywood\u2019\u2026for me it was like HOLLYWOOD, you know it\u2019s Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though she loved Hollywood, Szakacs did not\u00a0like L.A.\u2019s traffic. When she moved to the City of Angels, Szakacs traveled 20 miles a day from Studio City to Santa Monica on two buses, both to and from work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started at 9 a.m., [so I\u2019d] leave home at six\u00a0in the morning,\u201d Szakacs said. \u201c[I\u2019d] finish at 6 p.m., but then [get home] at 10 p.m. because of the transportation \u2026 in L.A. It was really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over 13 years, Sorina has experienced life in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles,\u00a0but which one wins the battle of the U.S. cities? Laughing as she thinks about her answer:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite city is New York,\u201d Szakacs said, but then rethinks. \u00a0\u201cI would say New York combined with Chicago during the summer, with L.A.’s weather. So, if I had a choice, I would choose to live in all, just to not betray any of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sorina Szakacs struggled with public transportation in L.A. when she first moved to the city.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in Romania, Sorina Szakacs imagined\u00a0life in the United States. \u201cMy dad remembers that since I was in the fifth grade, I used to tell him I\u2019m going to live in the U.S.\u201d Szakacs said. \u201cI\u2019m going to move there.\u201d So, she did \u2026 three times. In 2004, Szakacs arrived in New York, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":339,"featured_media":381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,14,10,12,9,13,11],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/339"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}