Let me start with some easy stuff without providing any numbers. Restaurants, bars, alcohol, and public transportation are a lot more expensive here. This is a fact. However, students don’t pay to ride the bus, you generally don’t pay to refill your soda and you never pay for bread and butter in a restaurant. It’s pretty standard to give a 15% tip in a restaurant and the service is usually good (or no tip). Most of the groceries are significantly  more expensive here, specially olive oil, fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice. Some are cheaper, like shower gel, shampoo, creams, toothpaste and detergent. Most of the times you also have good deals for meat. Electronics and gadgets are a lot cheaper here. Gas is a lot cheaper here. Cars are a lot cheaper here, even the german brands.

Housing and utilities: We are living in a nice and big 3 bedroom apartment on the fifth avenue. A 10-minute walk is enough to get to the campus. The rent is close to $1900 a month. Last month, we payed $112 for electricity, but keep in mind that sometimes we have the A/C turned on all day. The gas bill was $33 (for heating water and cooking). For cable TV and Internet the bill was $61. The speedtest reports 12Mbps but I don’t know what is the bandwidth hired. For TV, we have a special HBO package included.

One last and very important thing. You need health insurance if you are living here. We’re paying around $350 per month for health insurance (one of the top offers) which does not include dental care and eyes care. I heard this price is pretty good, but it might be because we got it through the university.

If you have any questions please leave them here and I’ll try to answer.

This week, I can see a lot of new students arriving, with their parents, going on a tour of the campus. Older students are the tour guides and they totally sell the school to the newcomers. I could feel by watching some of the newcomers’ faces that they already feel pride of being part of a prestigious school. That made me think on how we receive the freshman in Portuguese Universities. I guess we do the exact opposite, all we do is to have fun and humiliate the newcomers.

Then some other day, we went to a fancy restaurant for dinner. It was funny to see a fan in the middle of the bathroom.

On the other hand, when you ride the bus you need a jacket. It’s usually freezing in there! If the ride is long, even if you are wearing a jacket you might freeze to death, so beware!

I was able to dry my hands in less than 10 seconds (the same way I dry them when using other driers).

CMU postcard front

CMU postcard back

This clearly shows the effort to maintain a good relationship and integration with its neighborhood.



The officer didn’t warn us all, just Ricardo which was the nearest, but still…what’s the point?

Here’s the building

It is kinda gross to watch, as the contesters do some weird movements with their heads to facilitate swallowing that looks like they are going to puke..

While we were waiting for the fireworks, we listened the US Army National Band. It is interesting that at least on the 4th of July they really try to make war veterans feel special.

4th of July Fireworks from Nuno Loureiro on Vimeo.