My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

States Immigration Department a few months earlier, the only
other documentation we needed were the Immigrant Visas to be
issued by the U.S. Consul in Ponta Delgada. The next morning,
we took the local commuter Airline SATA from Terceira to Ponta
Delgada to obtain the visas. The officials at the US Consulate
were very nice. One of them was my good friend, Victor Cruz, and
he expedited our visas in just a couple of hours, so that we could
leave the next day.
The next morning, we flew to Montreal, Canada because there
were no flights to Boston. We arrived on Dec 31, 1967, so there
was snow everywhere. We didn't have proper attire for North
American weather in December. The temperature in the Azores
fluctuates between 60º to 80º degrees year round, which is a far cry
from the freezing temperatures in Canada. Everyone was terribly
cold.
I called my mother the moment we landed, and she was crying
inconsolably. "Your father just passed away," she said, and we all
cried. We stayed at my sister-in-law Maria Alice's house, in the
center of Montreal that night, and we left for Boston the following
morning. When we arrived, my sister Manuela was waiting for us
at Logan International Airport and she took us to Middletown,
Connecticut, a little more than a two hour drive from Boston.
Our Life in Middletown, Connecticut
My two sisters, Manuela and Adriana, were living in Middletown.
We stayed with them for a few days until we found an apartment at
a low income housing project, close to the Connecticut Valley
Hospital. After my father's funeral, I immediately went to look for
a job. I checked all the newspapers' classified sections to find a
position compatible to my credentials. I even went to Boston,
which was over two hours away, where there was an opening for a
Human Resources position. They rejected me because I was overqualified
and said that I would not last long in that job. They
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