Marina

1993 | St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Russia | Age: 33

We were a family of 3 - myself, my husband, and our son, who was 8 years old at the time. Our family grew here when we had our daughter 6 years later. We were actually pretty poor. We came here with just the $1200 that we had sold our car for. We packed everything in huge duffel bags. (We actually just used one to move my daughter into her college dorm.) We didn’t bring things “just in case.” We knew that we were starting over, so we took every single item that we thought we'd possibly need because we simply didn't have the money to buy new things. So we started our life here with furniture from the garbage, but we had pots and pans, fine china, and every imaginable kitchen utensil!

This cup is from a coffee set made near St. Petersburg, and everyone had the same set. It was the only place you could buy this fine bone china. Coffee was always made in a cezve. We’d buy coffee beans, roast them, grind them ourselves, and brew coffee in it. I don’t use it much nowadays, but it's originally from Israel, and we've had it for a long time. And this is a teapot for real tea; not tea bags. Of course the one thing I don’t have is a samovar!