What’s up everyone? I'm back! As you know from my earlier blog post I am attending RIT as an international student. It's been fun living in America but it can be a challenge to adapt.
As an international student, I thought I would provide some tips on how to adapt to the culture. I have heard that a lot of international students struggle on how to make American friends and how to adapt to the American lifestyle. Hopefully, you will find these blogs helpful.
American lifestyle is whole lot different, at least compared to where I am from (China). For example, I lived in a decent size city, and I could go to most places without having a car, because public transportations is well developed. Although, Rochester has buses and taxis, including Uber now, you still need to wait a while. Whereas in my city, there was little to no wait time for transportation. Before we got Uber in Rochester, it was not convenient at all for people to go to places if you did not have a car. Although we have the RIT shuttles, they operate on a shorter time schedule than during the weekdays. My advice is if you can afford a car, get one! It will make your life so much easier. By the way, going on a road trip with friends is amazing! Highly recommend it.
Buying groceries is different too. Back in China, my family usually buys groceries whenever we need. We do not buy a large amount of food that can last forever. This is probably because we have convenient stores everywhere and the supermarkets are close to us too. However, American family usually buy a large quantity of supplies, so they do not need to go to supermarket for weeks. One reason for this is because the amount of product in larger sizes are usually cheaper than just buying several smaller portions. Also, supermarkets are usually not close to residential areas, so the fewer trips made to supermarket will save you some gas money as well. These just some differences which I discovered and experienced in the past three and a half years. I learned a lot from my friends and also my host family while I was in high school. Hopefully, this will help you to adapt American lifestyle faster.
Stay tuned, more tips to come!