A tale of two cities: Riverside (USA) and BH (Brazil)

by Marcia and Ronaldo

Hi Blog,
We are originally from Belo Horizonte (BH), MG, in Brazil, where we have lived most of our lives. However, since September 2006 we are living in Riverside, CA, in the USA (click on map), and so far it has been a great experience. We would like to share with you a few differences between these two places.

Believe us or not (if you are from BH), public transportation service in BH is better than in Riverside. Getting around by bus in BH you can go to more places than you could go in Riverside. This is like that because cars in the USA are relatively cheaper than cars in BH, then fewer people need buses. But, as expected, buses in Riverside are in better condition than in BH.

It is summer season in Riverside and temperatures may reach 40 degrees celsius everyday and you definitely want an air conditioning. Contrarily, in BH we would barely need one. Moreover, Riverside is a semi-desert, it is sunny the whole year and much drier than BH. But notice that Riverside is colder than BH during the winter and you cannot live without heating. Riverside has almost no rain, differently from BH where you can get soaked during December and January. As you can now imagine, temperature in Riverside varies much more than in BH.

Finally, we would like to talk about ethnic groups you find in these cities. In BH we mostly find descendants of immigrants from Africa, Portugal, Spain and Italy. On the other hand, in Riverside you find many native Asians and Middle-Easterns and for that reason it is not rare to listen to many types of English accents.

Obviously, there is much more to say about some differences we found between these two cities. The good thing is that these characteristics make each city a culturally unique place to live.

Marcia and Ronaldo.