During the last fifteen years I live and work in the USA. Actually this is wrong. I live and work in the Greater New York, which is not exactly America.

I “ve met this American girl more than fifteen years ago at one of the gatherings of young people drifting around the globe. I “ve never been to America back then, and she told me, “If your first American city will be New York, promise that you won “t judge about this country based on this city. America is different rdquo;.

Now I know that she “s right. NYC is a place were people work harder than in most of the other places on Earth. It “s a place where one hour commute is considered a good deal. It “s a place where movie stars are walking on the streets and people do not really care. Madonna have applied twice for an apartment in a coop building called Dacota. Madonna? Nah…The building management denied it. New York is a place were people of more than 100 of different nationalities live next to each other without any major conflicts. Why? Because people got used to the fact that there are different people, and not everyone has to look and think as themselves. Live and let live. This is not the case in America, say in Texas. These 100 nationalities would be always foreigners there. Texas does not like foreigners that much.

But the City of New York does not fight with segregation. If you do not feel like blending in with the rest of the population, you do not have to. In Chinatown people speak Chinese.

In Russian area called Brighton Beach, large portion of the population does not speak English and does not plan to do so. One of the comedians said that “people who live here think that they emigrated from Russia rdquo;. But technically they did not, because their mentality remained the same.

There is this joke, when two guys are talking to each other in Russian standing on the sidewalk of Brighton Beach Avenue. A car stops by and an native American is asking for direction in English hellip;They do not pay attention. He asks again. They keep talking to each other. The car took off, and one of these guys said to the other, “So, did his good English helped him? rdquo;

There are areas where black people live. Borough Park is for religious Jews. You do not have to blend in. Your kids can grow up among the other kids that look alike, speak the same language and have the same cultural roots.

Lots of people from India live in New York. I ‘ve learned that they have casts back there, and if you were born in a family with a particular last name, you are doomed to be whatever their cast allows them. Not in New York. In terms of education or career, Indian people can go as high as they want here.

Oh yeah, Bensonhurst and Staten Island are predominantly Italian areas. One block on 41st street is Japanese. One block on 46th is Brazilian.

Five years ago 19 animals from Saudi Arabia killed about three thousand New Yorkers. If any minority in their own country would do the same, this minority would sease to exist within a week. Not in New York. New Yorkers forgot about it. Almost. By the way,do you know how they spell “Forget about it? rdquo; Check this out: Fuhgeddaboudid!

When drive through Brooklyn toward the JFK airport, there is an official road sign at the border of Brooklyn and Queens:

Isn “t it something? Live and let live! What a country! No, what a city! Forget about it and Happy Thanksgiving!