Hi every one? This is Khairi, Abdulateef. I?d like to talk here about the first few days that we have spent here in Boston.
My initial impression of the USA and Boston was very nice. I met a lot of nice and generous people here -no offense- more than what I had expected (with all due respect). That is because I have seen a lot of bad American movies which describe the people here in a different way (and bad way in many of them). In addition to that, I thought they will not be able to spend that much time that they have spent with us just to make us feel comfortable here.
At the same time, I have very good friends here. However they just shocked me in their extreme generosity and caring even more than what I expected (because they are very busy people and their time is very limited as I know).
The place here is very different from what I expected. I thought that all the buildings here will be very large and tall. It is big and nice (more than the one that we have there in our home). But I used to see very tall towers (in the movies and photos) in the USA. And I thought it will be like this here in Boston.
We have ventured out with some nice people who were sent by the very wonderful and kind Dean Michele V. Cloonan, and some other people from Simmons College. They volunteered to take us out in Boston. They took us on tours to discover the city. We used public transportation, and saw the important places.
We visited the MFA ?Museum of Fine Arts?, the Boston public garden, and the historical places in Boston. We went to Boston Public Library and some others colleges in the neighborhood, like Harvard and the MIT which are two of the most famous universities in the USA.
There are a lot of universities and colleges in our neighborhood. In fact, we live in the middle of University community here. One of the things that we did not know was that a lot of the educational institutions that are called Colleges here are Universities!?!. It is a confusing thing. One of the best examples of that is Simmons College. We thought that it is only a College. But it is a University at the same time. It contains many colleges in it. The colleges are called ?schools?. Simmons College contains many schools such as the GSLIS (Graduate School of Library and Information Science). It contains also other schools which are: School of Management, School for Health Studies, School of Social Work, and College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Studies. It has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in it. Some of them have B.A. in it, and others are not (like GSLIS).
For us, we haven?t started our studies yet. But Simmons College arranged an English course for us in the Boston languages institution for 4 weeks. We tried to improve our English language as much as we could before we start the courses.
We hope that we will succeed in that ?Insha?Allah??
Yours truly,
Khairi, Abdulateef Hashim