Brenda lived in El Centro, a little city where there are many places to visit. She told me about a commercial center or churches, parks (with ducks !). In matter of sport there are many sports facilities so it is more convenient to play tennis, football or basketball in these conditions !

But the city is like a desert (check the photo) and it might be very hot.

A photo of El Centro

But the city is not as you think, it's not a desert ;). Here is the hospital Brenda showed me while skyping.

The hospital in El Centro

Anyway, many restaurants are open there. She told me about restaurants from all origins : Mexican,American,Japanese,Italian,Chinese, ... ). As you can imagine there are less people in this city than in Los Angeles. There, people look very busy but on the other side, we can meet homeless people. 

Then we talked about suburbs, and we wanted to compare our views on it. For her, people living in suburbs are in little houses, and are not really wealthy : they live in periphery of the city. It's obvious life is less expansive in suburbs, and she were right to say education is different.

Finally we've got the same way to describe suburbs, but we sent ourselves photos to be sure we were talking of the same thing !

The result is funny ;)

Suburb in the United States

Suburb in France

Her life in UCI seems to be very nice. She's in third year and really enjoy this experience in UCI. She have met few very good best friends, and some of her friends are strangers. She can choose two years of general education classes following the categories of the university. The classes for her major is obligatory, and minors are optional.

During the week end she studies, does her homework, hangs out with friends, sleeps and relax, of course. But she prefers to go out and do something because she thinks later she could get bored.

Sometimes she babysitts little kids for a few hours only a few days. Her studies cost approximately  $14,500, and her house $600 every month. Happily  she has financial aid from school, grants and cal-grants and FAFSA help her pay for university. But for the house she has taken out loans and at the end of the university she will have to pay back in 6 months. Anyway she is able to mix time for her studies and personal life.

She's first generation student in the United Stats to go to school and to go to university. At home, Spanish is spoken because her parents don't speak a lot of English. Brenda and her family immigrated in 2006. They went to a state in Mexico called chihuahua and went to get residency documents.

In 2012 they were able to get citizenship so she guesses they are now''Americans''. But since she wasn't born in the United States, she doesn't like to be called ''American44 or ''Mexican-Amercian''.

According to her, she always behave more towards her Mexican culture with her family.

She thinks France is a multicultural country : she has a Taiwanese American friend who lives in France and has told her that there are other races too besides French.