Felipe Coelho Morais 10-07-14
English-ENC1101- Professor- Marco Miranda

Brazilian to USA

When I start to think about my whole trajectory that brings me here to Miami, I can’t help myself to start from the very beginning. I can’t tell you how I got here without making my childhood responsible for that, all my learning and all the work that I had to be here today are consequences of many actions and not only one in specific.

In Brazil I had a very fortunate life, in a very young age I had the privilege to study on the best schools there was, thanks to my father who always provided me with the best. Because of that, the institution of educations always had English class as a part of its curriculum, and those classes usually showed us part of the culture of the country that spoke the language, so USA has always been an example for us. The cultures that we had learn had always made a huge impact in my life, I wanted to see in person, and how this amazing country can pull all this together? So I started to look for ways to get there and live everything I had heard and study, but all this in a young age, by the time I celebrate my seventeenth birthday I was determined to go somewhere out of Brazil.

Therefore I started to look for places that I could do an exchange program in an English speaking county. At that time Brazilians were scared with all the things that had happened in USA, like the 9/11 for an example. So it came as no surprise that I chose someplace else other than USA, but I did not went too far.

Canada was the right path for me at the time, I got there as a child and after one year there I left as a man, I was eighteen years old. I know a lot of Americans are going to disagree with me but I found that Canada had many characteristics similar to USA. The culture is really similar and as I got to know Canada very well, I learned a lot about USA and my desire to go there was bigger than ever, but with some troubles I had on the way I realized that those plans would have to wait.

I got back to Brazil after a great experience in Canada and thinking with big plans in my life, so I went to São Paulo, the biggest city in all South America, to start university at Anhembi Morumbi International, I had chosen to myself Social Communication - Advertising, that gave me big knowledge on the area and made me realize how bad I wanted to go out of there, many of the subjects that we studied there, was simple references of the massive advertising business of USA. All the paperwork the classes were inspiring to me, to wonder how would be to live in the "best country in the world ".
Brazil was not in its best shape, the level of criminality was stratosphere and people who has the opportunity to live somewhere else are not waisting time, so my decision to move to USA was eminent.

Choosing a place to live in the US is not a simple task. You have to realize that this country is one of the biggest country in the planet and finding the right city among so many is an extremely hard challenge, especially when you have the curiosity to live in each and every one of its cities.

The first city that I had in mind was New York City, the place where everything can happen, city of lights and that never sleeps. So I started looking for education institutions that has the license to provide the i-20 form, that allows you to get you student Visa (F1), but it’s not easy as it sounds, many places has this license, so that took me many days of calling and researching the perfect English School, is not that my English was bad at the time but my intentions was to graduate in a different university, for that you need to have a English in a College level. Finding the perfect English school I had to start looking for an apartment that is close to school and offer some comfort, from that moment on,