When a satellite is launched, it goes into an orbit, generally a circle or an ellipse. That orbit is centered on earth's center of gravity. One point on that orbit has to be fairly close to the launch site. It looks like another point of orbit is visible from your location. Or maybe you saw the satellites on their next orbit (~90 minutes later, so the orbit track moves 1500 km to the West compared to a point on the equator).
So you weren't seeing satellites thousands of km away, they were more or less directly overhead.