Six months in New Orleans

My name is André Yuri. I am in a Brazilian scientific program in the United States to improve my English and study my major. This is a short story of how it is to live as a foreigner in almost six months in New Orleans.

When I left Brazil, I knew that I would be away from my family for one year and six months. I was sad but at the same time I was very excited because this is a fantastic program. In this program I would discover a lot of new things, people, culture, etc. I would also learn English and improve my major and my resume doing some courses in a North American university. After a 22 hour trip I finally arrived in The United States, in Atlanta, Georgia. After some hours in the immigration office I took another flight to New Orleans. At this time almost all of my future classmates were together in the airport waiting for almost an hour to someone pick us up there.

When I arrived at Dillard University I was very tired and hungry, but just after a few registers they took us to lunch and after to our rooms. The lunch really shocked me, not just the lunch but every meal. The breakfast is bacon with eggs. Wait bacon? With breakfast? This is weird. Lunch is always some kind of meat with some recipe of potatoes, cheeseburgers and pizza. Cheeseburger are served with lunch every day. I really miss my lunch in Brazil, because every lunch in Brazil has rice, beans, macaroni and some meat. Not just meat, potato and some cheeseburgers with fries. At dinner more cheeseburgers, pizza, some meat and potatoes. Not to mention that almost everything has pepper and this is really a problem. All those cheeseburgers, pizza and unlimited coke have made me nine pounds heavier in just 4 months.

Dillard University is what they call HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) that means almost all students are African American. This really was a shock for me, why they need a university just for blacks? There is no enough universities for everybody? Why do they not study together? Still today I really do not understand and I have no answers to these questions. In Brazil there are a lot of black, white, Asians, Indians, etc. All studying together, maybe is not the best education system but in my opinion we do not need to separate humans by color.

New Orleans is a fantastic city, this city is really great. There are a lot of musicians in the streets, jazz all over the city, some really good bars and clubs, and some good restaurants. But I really love the strong culture: there are skulls, voodoo dolls or alligator heads in almost every store and this is awesome. New Orleans also has a lot of haunted tours and boat tours to some alligator farms and I really want to go on some. Everybody in New Orleans is very nice but unfortunately I do not see the same at Dillard. Everybody here is very close. It is sad but I have more Brazilian friends in the United States than American, and I believe that almost everybody in my group has the same problem.

Finally I know how lucky and deserving I am to be in this great program, not just knowing new cities and new people, but improving my knowledge. I know how annoying and boring was the selection, but here and now I can say it was worth it.