Hayley CP #7

Maria

I met Maria outside of Suwannee Room and first we walked to Strozier Library because she needed to put some money in her account. The machine was broken so that didn’t work but she wanted to go to Chili’s to get some dinner. We sat down and she started asking me about the education system in America. In Brazil, it is really hard to get into university. They take only the best students and it is competitive. On the flip side, anyone can go to university regardless of their class. In fact, the richer students tend to be lazier knowing they can pay to go to a private university so the public universities are actually the best. The public universities are also free for anyone to attend. She was shocked when I told her that most students graduate with thousands of dollars of debt.

She also asked me about the health care system here which I really do not know too much about. She said they have public hospitals which are not very good, but anyone can go and they will get treatment. I told her about the Medicare and Medicade programs. I told her Obamacare is supposedly going to help the situation but it hasn’t started yet so no one really knows for sure what effect it will have.

She also asked me if we have the same kind of homelessness problems as they do in Brazil. Well, that is a definitely a no. We have homeless people and some really run down areas but no, I do not think that their favelas have a true equivalent here in the US. Especially if not if you compare how widespread the problem is in Brazil compared to the US. She also made an interesting point that all of the measures the Brazilian government does to fix its problems are really to reduce problems, rather than fixing them. She said the traffic is bad so instead of new roads and public transit which would be a massive project, they assign designated days you can drive your car. If they see your type of license plate on the wrong day, you are fined. This reduces cars on the road, kind of, but doesn’t really fix the problem. It sheds a lot of light on the recent protests in Brazil. I can really see how the people’s frustration has built up there.