“I miss going out for tapas. I’m craving a good plate of ham,” she says as soon as she picks up the phone. There are almost 8,000 kilometers between Pozuelo de Alarcón and dallas, and Cristina (41) is counting down the days until she returns home for Christmas. She has lived her whole life in aravaca and a few years ago bought a house in Pozuelo de Alarcón without knowing that, shortly after, she would be applying for an American visa. “I moved as a consequence, as my husband’s wife. A little because it was time. He works in the telecommunications sector and his company proposed coming to the United States in June 2023. They offered us Dallas and Seattle. We chose the former because it has a direct flight to Madrid and it doesn’t rain as much as in Washington. That was clear to us,” she adds. It took just over a year from the time they made the decision until they settled into one of the city’s residential neighborhoods: “We spent months trying to get the visa, talking to company lawyers, collecting all the necessary papers, waiting for the appointment at the American embassy, having interviews, etc.”
As in everything, the beginnings were not easy. “It’s not New York or San Francisco. I was afraid because I didn’t know anything.In fact, for me Dallas was a cowboy ranch. When we arrived, I tried to convince myself that this aesthetic was only for parties or special occasions. To my surprise, I’ve seen that everyone dresses like that in everyday life. I’ve even fallen for it myself,” she jokes. Two years after the move, the Madrid native says that life is “super good” and there is a “special” calm. “We came with two children aged nine and four, who are now 11 and six. For them it has been an incredible experience.” Near her house is a restaurant called Café Madrid, run by a neighbor from Wisconsin: “She studied Hispanic languages and fell in love with Spain.”
“Una agencia me contactó para hacer colaboraciones. No para mi propio perfil, donde no tengo tantos seguidores, sino para promocionar productos de otras marcas. Ellos me dan un briefing, creo el vídeo y me lo corrigen. Lo usan para anuncios, redes sociales, convenciones… varias veces me han pedido hacerlos en castellano, cuando están pensados para un público hispano, pero la mayoría son en inglés”. Según cuenta, recibe preguntas a diario de personas que, como ella, están pensando en cruzar el charco e instalarse en Estados Unidos. “Muchos están equivocados y creen que basta con encontrar un trabajo y un vuelo,cuando la realidad es que pocas empresas están dispuestas a pagar por tu visado”. Han pasado varios años desde que deshicieron las maletas. No obstante,todavía se sorprende con algunas costumbres en el día a día de los estadounidenses: “La gente va al supermercado en pijama. De repente estoy en Walmart comprando fruta y me doy cuenta de que soy la única que va bien vestida. También es llamativo el tamaño de la comida. Los paquetes de queso rallado pesan tres kilos, los cereales vienen en cajas de cinco kilos y la Coca cola en botellas de tres litros”.
“Vivo muy tranquila”
En Texas todo es más grande, dice. Hasta las tormentas, que a men
“It’s true that the things that happen are intolerable and should be eradicated, but you have to bear in mind that we are comparing a state of 300 million people with the size of European countries. Everything that happens here is insane, yes, but in my day-to-day I feel very calm.I don’t live insecurely or with fear. perhaps because I live in a residential neighborhood and it’s a kind of bubble,” she assures. In stadiums, for example, it is mandatory to carry a transparent backpack or bags of certain sizes, she says, to avoid weapons and “things that shouldn’t happen.” “Even so, I feel safe. It may be a self-defense mechanism, because when I arrived I was overwhelmed by uncertainty, but now I’m on autopilot. I can’t live in fear every day of my life,” she insists. In these two years, she considers the most terrifying thing she has experienced to be a robbery at her children’s school: “We thought it was a shooting, but it turned out to be a scare. When I arrived,I saw four armed police cars and I got very nervous. In the end it was just a thief, but I got very tense not knowing where it would end up.”
Shooting drills
They charged $10,000 for a doctor’s visit. Of that total, we had to pay $2,000 and the insurance covered $8,000.Since then, we think more carefully about going to the doctor. I am a hypochondriac and it is a torture for me,” she laments.