A trip to a big city... Boston!!

Boston... The first big city that I went since I'm here in USA. Boston is amazing, the city is beautiful with skyscraper, fountain, museums, mall and much more.

Where we arrived and left

First we left Saint Michael's at 7:00 in the morning, and arrived in Boston at 11:30. Than me and my friends went to Museum of Science, where we saw a lot of interesting things, and also we went to the planetarium and a learned a lot about the stars, I learned if I'm lost in the forest I can know where is the north, I know this will not help me get out of the forest, but I'll know where is the north.
After we left the museum, we went to the waterfront a very beautiful place, where we could take nice pictures, see some boats. Than we went to the Quincy Market there we saw some foods from all around the world. It was almost 6:00, we ate there and we return to the place where we arrived to back to St Michael's

Museum of Science

Brazilian Steakhouse

Waterfront

Museum of Science

Once upon a time ...

On this post I will talk about what I was doing in Brazil, before come to US.

I was studying Computer Science at the Universidade Federal Fluminense de Niteroi, a city near Rio de Janeiro, that I was studying since 2010.

UFF Coat of Arms



View from Niteroi to Rio de Janeiro





The Building Where I Have Class

I have already studied 3 years, and to finish I need just one more year. I was working in a lab called MidiaCom, in this lab the people work in the area of network and the Interactive Digital TV, where I was working.



MidiaCom Logo

The group that I were working with there are 2 PhD student, 2 master's degree students and 3 undergraduate students and the professor that helped us a lot. We develop tools to help people to create program to the Interactive Digital TV. They have already develop a lot of tools to help author that don't have knowledge in the language NCL, a programming language to create program to the Interactive Digital TV. An example of a interactive program is a TV commercial from a supermarket and than they shows some products and price, and you can buy this products pressing a button in the remote control. There are a lot of kind of programs that can be made, this is just one example.

 

Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi

The first adventures in U.S.

The first week was an adventure, everything was new experiences. I had to a lot of things by my self.

Saint Michael's Campus

When I arrived in the airport in Burlington Vermont on Sunday (06/30), the adventure started. The first person I met was Hiro, and  he's a student assistant from St. Michael's.He took me from the airport to college. He helped me with my luggage and he showed me to my room, he also told where were some places, and what I needed to do on Monday. After he left I went to met the others Brazilians that were here since Thursday (06/27) Lucas and Felipe, and we tried to go downtown but don't have buses on Sunday here, so we went to the gas station to get some food. We returned from the gas station and walked around the campus to explore, than I went to my room to arrange my things at 5:00 they started to serve the dinner, it was my first meal in US. The dining hall or cafeteria, as they call it here, is complete different from the dining hall of my school (UFF) in Brazil. Here they have different kind of food a lot of kind of desert difference things to drink, than when we finished the dinner I went to my room to sleep because I was very tired. In the middle of the night I woke up with my new roommate Ariel coming from the airport with Hiro.

First Dessert

The second day (Monday) it was everything new I woke up at 7:00 than took my shower arranged some things and went to meet the other Brazilians at 7:30 to go have the breakfast. The breakfast was like in Brazil 2 slices of bread and chocolate milk, i haven't seen bacon like every body thinks that they only eat this. After breakfast I went to the talk with my advisor and arrange somethings. Then theytook us to do a campus tour and do my knight card, the card that I can do everything here, with this card I can take a buss for free, print some documents, I go to the dining hall to eat, I can buy food or soda in the machines and do a lot of other things. After this tour I went to my first English class that I  had to do a test to know my level of English. When I finished this test it was near 12:00 and I went to have lunch. In the afternoon I created the college mail and then they taught us how to go downtown by bus, is's very easy and it's not and not very far. When we back from downtown I had dinner and went to my room to sleep that I was very tired.

Lunch

The third day it was almost the same from the second wake up at 7:00 than had breakfast, than I went to the class, after class have launch, than another class, after this class I went to eat dinner at the cafeteria than go home did some stuff and then slept, it was like a normal day.

On Wednesday (07/03) in the afternoon they took us to open an bank account, that we need to have since we will stay here a long time. When we come back we had a ride to see the to see the fireworks from July 4th at lake Champlain, it took a little time to be complete dark because here the sunset is about 9:00 so we waited a little time to see the fireworks, but when they started almost at 9:20 it was amazing, a lot of fireworks from the boat in the lake, it was something that I've seen, it was more than 20 minutes of firework.

4th July Fireworks

On Thursday was a holiday of July 4th, the professor Harold invited us to have an american barbecue, but first we went to Wal-mart to buy some stuffs like food. The I return to the school, I went to Harold's house to have the barbecue, Maggie my other professor went too and it was very good. It's complete different from Brazilians's barbecue, but it is good too.

Friday was my first regular day, I had class ultil 3:05 than I went downtown to walk on Church street, and know how is there, and buy some stuffs. The stores were o sale because of the holiday. Saturday I did some homework than I returned to downtown to buy more thinks that were really cheap.

On Sunday we had a trip, we went to an ice cream factory called Ben & Jerry's that the ice creams are very good. After that we went to one of the highest mountains in Vermont, we went up in a gondola, lunched there, then we returned to the bus, where they took us to a store to buy some souvenir. We return home where I did some homework for Monday.

This post was a little bit big, but it tells my first week here in Burlington as a foreign student.

Ben & Jerry's

Squirrel on Campus

Gondola

Canadá's leaf

Before everything happen!

Hi I'm Alexandre from Brazil, I'll study one year in US at Saint Michael's College and in this post I'll talk about what I did in Brazil and how was the process to study in US.

Rio de Janeiro - Ipanema Beach

I was born in Petrópolis a small city near Rio de Janeiro and I lived there for 18 years, than I moved to Rio de Janeiro to study computer science at UFF(Federal Fluminense University) in Niterói I'm studying computer science since 2010, In my school I worked in a computer science lab called MídiaCom that I was working in a project to help to do interact programs to the Brazilian System TV, in 2012 I had the opportunity to try the program BSWB(Brazil Science Without Borders) it’s
 a program that chose some Brazilians to study their under graduation in another country. I tried this program to study computer science in US in September 2012 and then I had to write some essays, write about me, write what I like to do, ask teacher from my school to write about me, than I had to do the TOEFL test. After do all this things I had to wait a long time to know for where I was going to study and in early April 2013 I received my ToA(Terns of Appointment) that I saw that I was going to study at St. Michael's. Than from April until my travel date I had to do a lot of things, I had to take some vaccines, fill a lot of papers, take the visa to go to USA,  arrange a lot of things, because stay one year outside your home it's not easy you don't know what can happen and you can't go there to solve the problem. And the day of the trip arrived, June 29 most of my relatives and my friends went in the airport in Rio de Janeiro, than I took the plane to Bogota and there I wait for 3 hours to take another plane to New York, JFK airport. In JFK airport I waited 12 hours from 11:00pm until 10:00am the next day and then I took another flight to Burlingon. And a SMC student took me at the airport to the SMC Ryan hall.

school friends at the airport

college friends

Church Street