Day 28

Name: Elaine Watts

Profession: Campus aide, Mountain Trail Middle School

Location: Mountain Trail Middle School

Question: What led you to where you’re at right now?

Answer: My ability to adapt and love

Q: Why are you where you’re at right now?

A: Well, what do you mean?

Q: You can answer it however you choose.

A: Well, I would take it as, why am I here in America? And the reason I’m here, I guess, is because my husband wanted to work here and I didn’t want lose my husband so I came over with him. It’s a pretty simple answer, but that’s how I came to being in America, I guess.

Q: What does he do? Why did he want to come over here?

A: He was a self-employed contractor in England. A software engineer contractor. And he had worked, he came over to America to visit on a few small contracts. He’s been to San Francisco, he’s been to Washington, D.C. He also went to Seattle, Washington, and he also had a small stay in Boston. And he just loved all the different areas. He just said to me one Christmas that he wanted to work in America on a long-term contract and asked if I would go with him, and we’d take our small son—we had a small son at the time—and I said, yes, I’d love to, because I’d never set foot in America. So, that’s how we came over here. He had been looking for a contract and got a contract with American Express, and we came over here with American Express. But I came over on his visa as a spouse. Just a spouse on a visa, so I was unable to work or anything like that for the first two and a half years. But, it was just an experience that I wanted to experience.

Q: Why did he come to Scottsdale/Phoenix?

A: Well, basically when he was looking for the contract job, it came down to a choice of two. There was one in L.A., Silicon Valley, and the other one was here in Phoenix. Checking out the housing situation between the two, we just figured Phoenix might be a little better than Silicon Valley. So we decided to—or, he decided on this one. Both jobs were excellent. Both jobs were very much the same thing. Both jobs were with American Express, in fact. So it didn’t matter too much. It just came down to personal preference, where we wanted to live. And he obviously took us into consideration, and we picked Phoenix.

Q: And how do you like it?

A: Now? I like it a lot. If I leave Phoenix, I will certainly remain in America somewhere. I certainly won’t go back to England. Or maybe another country, but I certainly don’t want to go back to England. Now, I really like it here. Obviously, the summers are a bit much, but the rest of the time makes up for the extensive heat. We really like it here.

Q: Why would you ‘certainly not’ go back to England?

A: Mainly because of the weather. Also, during the times that I’ve been here, I’ve lost my immediately family, and I don’t really have anything there now. My mother- and father-in-law, my sister-in-law and that’s about it. I mean, a couple of nephews. So there’s no real immediate family for me to go back to. The weather’s horrible. The economic climate is just as bad, if not worse than here, and it will take them just as long if not longer than Phoenix to pick up on the economic climate. So right now specifically, probably for the next five, ten years or so, it’s really not a good time for us to go. And when we’ve got five, ten years over with, we’ll be looking at retirement, so it’s not a good idea to retire in England, either.

Q: What would you say the major cultural differences are between England and the United States?

A: Stuck up. England is very, just when I was growing up, it’s very formal, children should be seen and not heard, much quieter, calmer, I guess more manners, in a way, more etiquette. Maybe as an adult coming to America, bringing up my son, I’ve seen a bigger change in that. But there’s also been thirty, forty years difference. So when I talk to people about their childhood, they say pretty much the same thing as England. And especially when they’re from the East Coast. The East Coast people, growing up in the sixties and seventies as I did, that they were pretty formal and parents were more disciplined and that. So I think that’s a major change in the mindset more than the economic, different country change. But that’s the main difference that I noticed nowadays. Or I did when I moved over here with my son.

Q: Do you consider yourself to be English or American?

A: I am very much English. Very much English. I don’t have American citizenship. I don’t know if my husband and I—we’ve talked about it, and we’ve said yes, we’ll possibly do it, we’d quite like to do it, but it costs a lot of money and so far we haven’t been able to afford citizenship. We’re happy with how everything is right now. And I think if I was to go, when we were talking about going for our American citizenship, I think that would definitely make me feel more American, but I still have English roots. I think that if somebody asked me that in the future, I would say, ‘Well, I’m American now, but I’m from England.’ So pretty much like the Americans I meet that have relatives from England that have spoken to me about that. But right now, I think of myself as much more English than American.

Q: What did you do before you moved over here?

A: Basically, I was just a mother and housewife. I did have a very small part-time job. I pretty much always worked as some form of receptionist or personal assistant, that sort of area. I had just started working out as a computer software person, but it was a position that was an assistant to other software programmers, so I was in an assistant role. So I was also sort of played an assistant/receptionist role. And I did have a very small part-time, after having my son—he was about two years old—and I got to know some friends that owned a hot air balloon company. So just helping them out on the telephone with clients that were booking flights or rebooking due to bad weather…. So I just helped them out on the telephone, and then also went along and helped to put the balloons up and get them on their one. And one time they asked me to do ground crew, where they asked me to chase the balloon, so I was helping one of the guys do that because it really takes two: one guy for navigation and one to drive. And that was a very interesting job, but I only did it three hours a day.

Q: And how did you come to be a campus aide at Mountain Trail?

A: Well, I’ve been in America for coming up on thirteen years, and for a few I could not work. Like I said, I was on a visa until I could get on a green card and was able to work. And I started to work at Hi-Health. I actually worked there for about eight years. But my son was in private school, and he left private school and we got him into Mountain Trail because I literally live just over the road from it. He was here for two years, and during his last year here they were advertising out front, ‘Campus Assistant Required.’ I just thought, it’s really low call, my son’s been to the school, so I knew the school through him, and it was just a great opportunity to be here some of the time and then spend the rest of my day—because I only worked part-time—and go home in the afternoon. And I have my afternoons with my son. Even though he’s a junior now, I still get to spend the afternoons with him and I live so local that if anything happens at home, I can drive home quickly and do that. I just really like to be here and I would have liked to come and work here while he was here, but he said no. He didn’t like that idea. So I didn’t come. So I’ve only been here since my son left eighth grade.

Q: You said your son is a junior, correct?

A: Yeah, he’s a junior now.

Q: Are you guys thinking about college yet?

A: Yes, definitely. He’s looking at Rhode Island. Rhode Island School of Design. So he wants to be an architect. He wants to do graphic design on the architecture side.

Q: What do you think about him moving across the country?

A: It’s scary. Well, the funny thing is that up until last week, I was pretty scared. Pretty scared. I’ve never been over to the East Coast. I’ve never experienced it. I’ve heard that it’s lovely, that it looks very much like England from what people have seen of England and what they’ve seen of the East Coast, so I started to think it would be a nice place to visit. But then I was thinking, ‘Oh gosh! What about the flying over there?’ Is it awkward and things like that? And then your mom told me just last week that flying into Rhode Island is one of the better places to fly into, all sorts of good deals on flights and things like that. So she put me at ease a little bit. And now, I’m actually quite excited for him. I’m really hoping that that will pan out for him. And I really like to travel, so it will be really nice to get to see him and experience the East Coast at the same time. So I’m quite excited about that now.

Q: Do you have any plans for the future?

A: Not really. We’re happy to see here, other than my son going off to Rhode Island. No little plans for the future. Our immediate plans are that we’ve lived in the same house for ten years and we’re hoping to get a home loan pretty soon and upgrade and renovate the house. So I guess that’s our immediate plans. And long-term plans: just looking forward some day to retire and staying around the Phoenix area. My husband loves the Phoenix area, and I’m beginning to enjoy it more and more each day. So I think we’re definitely going to be staying around here somewhere.

Q: Do you have any hobbies?

A: I do. I do a lot of crafting. Pretty much I’ve done everything over the years. I really got into it, well I knitted a lot. I did a lot of knitting and dabbled with crochet when I was in England. From even before I was married, I would knit myself jumpers and cardigans and things. And when my son was born, I started knitting toys and child-proof things. I’ve even knitted dog toys and things. But that was the year before I got married. But since getting married and since moving here, when I first moved here, like I said, I couldn’t work because I’m on a visa, so I had a lot of times on my hands. I started painting, painting objects. You would call it tole painting, where you paint a household object. It could be anything from a cabinet to a pot, any type of pot. So I did tole painting. I’ve done a lot of hand sewing, a lot of felt products. I still do a lot of knitting. I dabble with crochet. I use my leftover yearn from my knitting to make a crochet blanket, a quickly crocheted blanket. Mostly dog blankets; I’ve got a lot of dogs so I make crochet blankets for them. So I’m pretty much always doing something with my hands, always knitting or doing something in the craft field. Something I have not ever done, something I’ve wanted to do but I haven’t quite gotten around to it and I don’t know if I ever will, quilting. I’ve never really done quilting. I’ve dabbled with making fabric items like placemats and things like that, but I’ve done it with braiding and I’ve done it through hand sewing. I’ve never done it by machine quilting or real big quilts. So I guess it’s one of the things I need to do.

Q: Just out of curiosity, does that save you a lot of money, being able to do that yourself? Or do the materials cost just as much as it would to buy something you would otherwise make?

A: When you’re first starting out to do something, yes, it can seem like a lot of money. If you go onto make a lot of things… Like now, for example, I’ll make one, I’ll buy a kit to make one, and then I’ll buy a larger amount of fabrics or corks or whatever it is I need for the project to make this gift. And in that way it’s much cheaper. I make a lot of Christmas gifts and birthday gifts and things like that. And when I have balls and balls of yarn, which I obviously use and save—I’ll save half a yard or something—I’ll just get the yarn out and make socks for a friend or something. And in that respect, yes, it is a lot cheaper. But when you’re first starting out, when you go to a craft sale and see something and say, ‘Oh, I want to make that,’ and you go to buy a kit to make it, a kit can be quite expensive. So as you progress on, it becomes cheaper. I would generally say, the quick answer to your question would be it does save you money in the long run. And it’s so much more satisfying to give a homemade gift and to see people’s expressions when they say, ‘You made this?’ It’s so much more satisfying for you. It really is a gift you’re giving from your own hands, as well as a gift that you’ve bought.

Q: Do you have anything that you’d like to add?

A: Well, one question that you haven’t asked me and I thought you might, is that I have done is I have done quite a bit of volunteer work. And it’s one question that—. I’ve been interviewed like this before, about fifteen years ago, I went through a similar thing. Someone asked me about different things, and one question they didn’t ask me, like yourself, is ‘Do you volunteer for anything?’ or ‘What do you think of volunteering?’ or something along those lines. I would just like to add that you can think of a question like that to ask people. I, for the last ten years, have volunteered with the Adopt-a-Greyhound Society. I have five greyhounds at home right now. That all started in my life actually back in England, when I was fourteen. I was walking through a shopping mall and I was fourteen, that was in 1979, and that was a major time in the seventies when human rights were really making it big. And people were saying that animals have rights and there should be no more animal testing and all that going on. There were lots of, not so much riots, but people standing up for animal rights. There was this promotion type thing going on where they wanted me to sign my name saying you’re against animal cruelty, and I did that. I was able to do that. A guy came over to me and said, ‘Will you sign?’ and I said, ‘Can I?’ because I was only fourteen and my mom wouldn’t let me sign, and he said, ‘No! Anybody can sign. We just need signatures. We’re taking this and we want to stop animal cruelty.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay! Great!’ And they had a huge photograph. A huge, black and white photograph of a greyhound and I never recognized it as a greyhound. It’s eyes were three times the size of what it should have been and there was all this black leakiness coming from its eyes, and I said to the guy, ‘What is that?’ And he said, ‘It’s a greyhound.’ I knew of greyhounds, but I had never seen a greyhound’s picture. And I looked to my mom and said, ‘Greyhounds? Like the racing dogs?’ My mom had told me about racing dogs. And she said, ‘Yeah!’ ‘Oh, wow. They look so sad! What’s wrong with it?’ He said, ‘It’s had shampoo put into its eyes and it had an allergic reaction. The dark fluid that you see is blood. His eyes were bleeding.’ And it just really, really got to me, and as we were walking away, I said to my mom, ‘If, whenever I can, I’m going to help and I’m going to work with greyhounds and I’m going to adopt greyhounds and do whatever I can because I never want to see that photograph again.’ And then I went on to find out from that guy that greyhounds were the number one animal—it was not rats or monkeys or rabbits, it was actually greyhounds—were the number one animal used for animal testing at that time for makeups, shampoos, everything you name. They used to inject it into their eyes and under their skin. And the reason for that was because they would break into racing and once they finished racing, there was nowhere to put them, so they put them into the laboratories for animal testing, and that was their life. And I vowed that I would do something. So now I work for the Arizona Greyhound Agency, where we have greyhounds that come straight off the track and we foster them and adopt them out to loving families rather than put them into laboratories. They are still, however, used as blood donors because they have universal blood. So they are still blood donors, and we know all about that. That’s a good thing they’re doing there. As for animal cruelty, that doesn’t happen anymore.

Q: So how long have you been a greyhound owner for?

A: Ten years. The last ten, eleven years. It will be eleven years this year. Having coming to America, like I said, I wasn’t working and we didn’t know how long we would be staying here, and I had fish—my son wanted some form of pet—and we had fish. I went into PetSmart and they had the greyhounds there doing a bit of PR, advertising the adoption agency. And straight away, I saw them and was like, ‘That’s it! I’m done! I’ve got to get involved with this.’ So I got involved in the agency before I could even adopt one and I didn’t know how long I was going to be staying here. Once we got our green cards and everything that told us we were going to stay here, I started to adopt hounds. And like I said, I have five more at home.

Q: At home with five greyhounds, is that a lot of work? Is it really busy?

A: They’re real docile. They’re not lively, like people think. When they’re racing, they can only race twice a week. They’re really very docile. People think they’re going to run around like crazy, but they don’t. They literally sleep for eighteen hours of the day. The only time I know I have them is when it’s feeding time and when one of them wants to go out for a walk and he’ll wake up the other four and they’ll all want to go out for a walk. That’s the only time we know we have them. Most of the day, they’re sleeping on the couch. They’re very happy.