Published: November 26, 2007 11:04 am         

International student adjusts to Ada

ADA - “The idea I had of the United States was of New York, Chicago, and L.A. When I came to Ada I kept thinking that surely there is a mall here or some entertainment. The only thing that Ada had that I thought would be here was a McDonald’s,” said Maira Moraes, international student and recent graduate of East Central University.

“I have never lived in a small town. In my home town there are around a million people. If you have to go to the bank be prepared to spend the whole afternoon because you will wait in line for two hours and there is no drive-thru. When I came to the bank here for the first time and went through the drive-thru, I was amazed there was this thing that flies away with your money.”

Moraes is from Sao Luis, Brazil. It is located 30 miles from the equator and it is the capitol of Maranhao.

“The population of Brazil is 80 percent Catholic, but our Catholicism is very different from Catholicism in the United States. I didn’t know that until I came here. We have a lot of superstitions and the saints that we pray to are not always the same as the saints here.

“Brazil has the most Africans outside of Africa and it also has a lot of Japanese, Italian, and German people,” Moraes said. “It is a neutral country so every time there is a war people go to Brazil and the country is very open to immigrants.”

Brazil is a democracy with an elected president. They vote for president every four years, but the difference between their elections and the United States as they vote directly and do not have an electoral college system. They also have more than two political parties.

“The first president was elected the year I was born, 1984. In Brazil you are obligated to vote, but everyone takes pride in voting because the right to vote is so recent.

“Brazil is also a very rich country, but the wealth is unevenly distributed. There are not many rich people, but there are a lot of poor people. If you go to northern Brazil it is less developed than the southern part.”

Education is an issue in Brazil as well. They have a public education system that includes public universities that are free for the students to attend.

“The public schools are no good. If you want a good education you have to pay for a private school, which is very expensive,” said Moraes. “The public college is made up of rich people because to get in you have to pass a very difficult test. Only the people who paid for private school are able to pass the test.”

Moraes came to the United States when she was 15 to attend a year of high school. She lived with a host family and attended Ada High.

“In most South American countries, at age 15, your family presents you to society and you have a huge party. When I was 15 the biggest thing was to have the party or go to Disneyland. I couldn’t stand the idea of going,” said Moraes, “because I don’t like roller coasters. So instead of going to Disneyland we found out about a program to come to the States for a year to go to high school. I had already been learning English.

“One of my host families came to Brazil to visit me two years later when I was already in college. They had saved a lot more money than what they spent in Brazil so they asked me to come back to Ada and go to ECU and live with them. They told me they would pay for the first semester.”

Moraes decided to take the offer. She graduated from ECU in May 2007, with a major in business administration with a marketing concentration. After the first semester with her host family, thing were financially difficult for Moraes.

“There are not a lot of scholarships available for international students. I worked on campus the whole time I went to school, but I never saw the money because my paycheck would go directly back to the school to cover my tuition. Sometimes my family and host family would give me money for expenses. I never had all the things I needed for school - the books and calculators and things like that.

“International students will do whatever they can to continue their education once they are here. They have left behind everybody they know and everything they own to come to the United States to study. All the money we make stays here in the community, yet we are not allowed to work in the community to support ourselves,” Moraes said.

Both of Moraes’s parents are professors. Growing up her parents stressed the importance of an education above all else.

“Mom is always the one who wants me to come home, but at the same time she is all about education. My whole life I was taught that you either study or you will starve. There is no in-between.

“They are proud that I made it,” said Moraes. “My parents were able to come here for my graduation. My dad didn’t stop crying the whole time. He was just so happy. I always volunteered for whatever I could as a way to meet people and make new friends so a lot of the professors knew me. When he got here and saw I had all these people behind me, I think it just really touched him. He really wants me to finish my master’s degree.”

Moraes is currently studying to take the GMAT test for graduate school. She hopes to be accepted to Thunderbird University in Arizona. The problem is again financial in that she will have to qualify for a scholarship to cover tuition.

While Moraes is waiting on graduate school, she is working in the marketing department for Vision Bank.

“They really take care of me here. I started applying in January for a job. I applied everywhere. I even went to New York City and Dallas for interviews. As soon as you tell people you only have a one year VISA and that after it expires they will have to sponsor you, the interview is pretty much over.

“I came here to Vision Bank and they hired me. They are also going to try to sponsor me,” said Moraes.

As an international student, Moraes said she has had many people ask her how she felt about Oklahoma’s new immigration law. One of the main provisions of the new law is that it makes it a crime to provide shelter or transportation to any who is known to be illegal.

“I think people tend to forget the fact that most of their great-grandparents are from other countries,” said Moraes. “The problem is that 20,000 people are not paying taxes. If you make them legal then they will be paying taxes. I know a lot of Mexicans that if you offer them a reasonable way to get their green card, they would not refuse it. Right now to get a green card they have to go home for 10 years before they can come back.”

Moraes said that the most important thing is that people need to see the similarities in each other and not focus on the differences.

“People have more things in common than differences. Focus on those common things. Take a person who is a Muslim and a person who is a Christian and put them together. They would find they have more things in common than the differences that separate them. We have a lot to learn and can have better relationships with other people when we focus on the things in common.”

     

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.