The city of Rochester is pretty much completely different to anywhere else
I've ever been Rochester's a bit more I want to say well architectured sorry in that
most things are like blocks of stores or like malls that you can walk into itself
and then their public transport systems a little different as well it's
so much more quietly developed than everywhere else there's a lot of space in
between buildings I wouldn't describe it as a metropolitan environment but I do
consider it to be a city environment it's much smaller but it has a lot more
music scene going on which I'm really happy about I'm able to venture out and
find new things and it's also a way to kind of get away from the busyness of
coming from a big city it's a cool experience being part of like a suburban
City i think and I like it it's different it's new
Coming to a different country and starting college life alone of course is going to be a challenge to anybody
There was certainly struggles when I first came to the United States
because language, I wasn't fluent in speaking English yet
I knew nothing, almost nothing about American culture, except for what I would see on major
Hollywood productions in the cinema back in Japan.
America is known for having a
lot of diversity of within the population and that's also true on the
University campus and it was that made it really easy to find new friends
because you could find pretty much any type of person that you would like.
I just almost believe that as long as I keep participating in activities that
I'm interested in and keep making friends keep it open myself to people
I will eventually overcome everything most people actually find the jamaican accent
really attractive and interesting so they tried to mimic it although it's
funny because i'm trying to mimic them for the sake of communication the
biggest culture shock that I've ever experienced was actually when I found
out that Kentucky Fried Chicken does not deliver in America it's true, freshman year I cried.
The international community at the University of Rochester is an ever-growing diverse community.
If I can simply describe it in one word it would be diversity.
The international culture here in campus is definitely very open
we have a lot of students from Asia primarily but for every international
culture there is more than definitely at least one general interest group that's surrounded around that.
there's such adiverse relation that goes across
borders across these ethnic boundaries
although you're not at home you can definitely feel like you're at home
If you really want to
You never know who
you're gonna meet at the University who you might end up calling the best friend of your life
I think it's probably difficult to make new friends because in the US and
on college campuses there are lots of very different people and it's quite
easy to find the right circle of people that you'll feel comfortable with I find
it pretty easy to make friends but I think that's because I put myself out
there all the time and I was very involved in on-campus activities I think
if you stay in the dorm every day it'll be quite challenging to make new friends
for me and most other Jamaicans I'm tempted to say oh we talk a lot
so I've never had a huge problem in terms of being social so it wasn't that
difficult primarily when there's a huge icebreaker like the way I talk
my strong group of friends I actually met at a Frisbee game because they were playing
ultimate frisbee and I didn't know that frisbee was more of a sport that you
play like that I thought it was just the disc that you tossed back and forth so
seeing them play this game I was sitting on the sidelines and they thought I
was a weird international kid, they came up to me invited me to play and that's how
I got to know my good group of friends here I did feel it was very easy to make
friends here in Rochester mainly because I think everyone here is so passionate
the way I work in the admissions office and I do see the way that people are
admitted and they're admitted because of their passion because they love what
they do and because of that it was so easy to meet people who are so
passionate and so interesting and since I'm passionate about history
and film I was able to relate with a lot of people about that so it was good.