My first quick impression of Boston: The Museum of Science and the Waterfront

     Most of the summer exchange students, including myself, went to Boston a few days ago.

The entire trip took all day to finish.

We departed from St.Mikes at 7:30 a.m, and arrived back here around 11:30 p.m .

       First, we get to Boston at around 11:15 p.m, and the bus dropped us off  at the Prudential Center. From that time, Everyone was free to choose any place that they wanted to visit. We brazilians decided to go to the museum of Science . We headed for the museum by using the subway.

When we got there, we paid about $25 dollars to get free access throughout the hall plus a  40-minutes presentation called Planetarium which was inside a theater where there ways a virtual sky projected in the entire round wall. Afterwards, We visited an enormous variety of expositions throughout the building, from nature exhibits - like animals and plants - to physics, maths and high tech exhibitions.

We stay there for practically the whole afternoon, then we went to the waterfront and spent the last hours there. 

        By 6:45 p.m, we got back to the Prudential Center through the metro station. We departed from Boston at 7:30 p.m, everyone was exhausted, so the drive back to Colchester was very tranquil.

I, for example, came sleeping all the way back to Saint Mike's  hahaha.

Lectures and Conferences about Foreigner-Related Topics

 

       One of the most interesting class - despite all of them were fabulous - was about culture shock, adjustment to a foreign culture and etc. The professor Patty, who was teaching the class, has already had great experiences abroad and been through many kinds of similar situations that required her skills to handle them.
         First of all, Maggie handed us out two Patty's text that spoke about situations in which someone had a hard time understanding why such an specific culture used to act like that. If her mission was to previously grab people's attention about the topic She really did it.
        Secondly, She began talking about the 'visible' part of the culture in which we can perceive easily, and then told about the biggest part of the culture which is hidden from our common vision - "blind spot" - , and it can take a while to get settled in this new ambiance. She showed so much confidence about what she was speaking about. We could make a bunch of questions and comments along the lecture. she was completely open to let us speak up about any related topics and she listened carefully to our speech in order to best solve our doubts.

Finding out my career directions and Basic Itinerary of the entire Program

 The Studies in my field will take a while to start, I guess in late August. I'm going to take one semester, and afterwards, take a 3-month internship here in the U.S.A before I return to Brazil. My area of study is Information Systems, by the way.

                When I was a high school student, I had been really into studying something about engineering before I started getting to know about Computer Science and all those computer stuff.

 I was first interested in my current field when the date to apply for all the universities admissions started to come closer and I had to make up my mind about what I would choose for my future. As all Brazilians know, We had to take the ENEM exam to compete for one position in the major desired when we're about to graduate from high school. Then, in the next stage that we had to make our decision I wasn't successful in the major that I really wanted. However, and hopefully, I succeeded in the second choice that offered more available spaces to fill, which was in the exactly course and university that I'm attending the days before USA.

                My Experiences are especially with computer programming, some subjects about administration and the basics about economics. Also, I did some research about servers stuff, like installing and configuring servers and creating virtual machines. In addition to that, I manipulated some applications, especially for video and voice conference, but now I took a break because of my studies here in the U.S.

                I'll be first taking English classes in the pre-academic program, and then I'll start the academic program. I'm not sure about what disciplines I'll be taking here yet. But I looked up all the available ones, so I just need to discuss with my advisor to know which of them I'm capable of and ready to do. During this semester, I must be looking for some company to work as an intern somewhere in the country.

- PS: I know this picture doesn't match the topic written above, but I posted it anyway! xD

   PICTURE DURING THE TRIP TO STOWE MOUNTAIN AND BEN & JERRY'S FACTORY. 

   SOMEWHERE NEAR A GAS STATION.

My very first Independence day in the USA

Happy Fourth of July!

The celebration started one day before the official date in South Burlington, more specificly on Lake Champlain. The main attraction was the Fireworks by 09:45 p.m .

Almost all the people from Burlington and surrounding towns were gathered at the same place to apprecciate the fireworks spetacular, from teenage groups to entire families, all hanging out together, having a picnic, taking a sun bath and participating in some other attractions like live music, Sambatucada (group of brazilian Samba).

Unfortunately, I just arrived at Lake Champlain at the time to see the fireworks, I couldn't spend the entire day there. The spectacular took about 30 minutes and everyone stopped to watch it. I could notice specially teenagers in different and extravagant clothes though a couple of them were really awesome and edgy.

On the whole, This was my very first strong contact to american celebrations and traditions.

In a scale from 1 to 10, It'll certainly reach a 10!