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A car is a luxury item for most college students due to soaring university tuition rates, high living expenses, and pricey textbooks. It is a little more difficult for international and out-of-state students who are unfamiliar with the New York metro area, but Adelphi students always get the special treatment. The Office of Public Safety offers the wonderful shuttle bus service to cater to the transportation needs of students who have no other means of getting around Long Island. The shuttle bus service routes were designed to stop at strategic locations that will take you to more places than you’d think.
Making Life Easier
Every morning, commuter students and faculty members come from various places on Long Island and the City to attend to their daily schedules at Adelphi’s Garden City campus. Rather than having to walk or run, depending on how early or late they are, Adelphians can take advantage of the free, easy ride offered by the University’s shuttle bus service. The bus is always on time and will surely take international students to the station in time to catch a train to Manhattan, one of the most alluring cities and famous islands in the world. Students can also use the Mineola LIRR station shuttle bus stop to take the train, or visit the Citibank branch in the vicinity.
Making Life Fun and Convenient
The shuttle buses to Roosevelt Field and The Source malls open a plethora of things to do and places to go for international students, or any students with no cars. The Roosevelt Field stop does not only take you shopping; if you explore a little further, heading towards the north end of the mall, you’ll see an AMC movie theatre, then a Citibank branch. Keep going, and you’ll discover a large Barnes and Nobles bookstore, a Stop and Shop, as well as an HSBC branch, located on the first floor of the 1-800 Flowers building. The Source Mall stop is offered only on weekends, no doubt, to prevent the studious students from being distracted from their scholarly pursuits by the numerous shopping options. This mall has many famous stores like H&M, The Gap, and Old Navy, with great sales. If you’re in the mood to go to a restaurant one weekend, you might want to visit The Cheesecake Factory, where you’ll find the most ample variety of cheesecake flavors an international student has ever seen. You could also stop by the Cold Stone Creamery, also encompassed by The Source. The weekend shuttle bus route includes a stop at the Target department store, from where you can go to an AMC movie theatre, Walmart, Office Max, or Borders, among others. The Cherry Valley Shopping Center stop is extremely useful for making off campus groceries, since it will bring you within walking distance of a Pathmark store and a Stop and Shop.
To see the latest shuttle bus schedule, please click here.
The concept of the "mall" is purely American. While Europeans, Africans, and Asians have to look for their favorite stores by walking down intricate streets, which offers them the chance to explore, and occasionally be pleasantly surprised with finding a new chic restaurant, a posh little shoe store, or a small antiquities shop, the Americans are much more pragmatic. The mall encompasses stores, restaurants, public facilities to satisfy everyone from 3 year-old children to their 90-year old grandparents. Like a modern-day version of the agora of the Ancient Greek cities, the mall brings all sorts of people together and offers them a minimal time consuming way to shop, eat, and relax in the fast-paced American society of today.
A Few Historic Facts
Clothes and shoe stores, basics, electronics, no matter what you need and what your budget is, you can find anything at the mall. Adelphi students are particularly lucky because they are located in the close vicinity of one of the biggest malls in the United States, Roosevelt Field Mall. But the beloved mall of Long Island residents has a more profound history than the stores let show. A few wall paintings throughout the mall portraying airplanes and pilots dressed in the fashion of the 1920s are the telltale signs of its past. Located on what was originally known as the Hempstead Plains field, later designated as Hazelhurst Field, the mall was initially an airfield, subsequently named for Theodore Roosevelt's son, Quentin, who was killed in combat. Roosevelt Field was the starting point for the first transatlantic flight, made by Charles Lindbergh May 20-21, 1927. It was used by the United States Navy and Army during World War II, and then was converted into a commercial airport, which eased its transgression to its current shopping center status.
Let’s See Now…Where Should I Shop?
Anchor department stores including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and JCPenney; famous fashion stores such as Banana Republic, Cole Haan, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, GAP, and Urban Outfitters, are only some of the places where people can find nice, high-quality clothes. One can also find cards, books, gifts, and stationery at B Dalton Bookseller, Hallmark Gold Crown, LeMarc’s Hallmark, and Papyrus. Bath and Body Works and The Body Shop are only some of the shops that will cater to your health and beauty needs. Although Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma are a bit out of the affordable price-ranges for students, you can always find something cute and different to decorate your room or house at Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters. You can find your electronics at the Apple store, Sony Style, Bose, or Radioshack. If it’s active wear and sporting goods you’re seeking, go to Footlocker or Timberland. There are tens of other stores you might enjoy, so don’t hesitate to make your own discoveries.
When Hunger Strikes…
Getting hungry from all that shopping? Just go to the second floor of Roosevelt Field mall. You'll find everything from fast food to Indian, Chinese, and Italian cuisine - from Café Spice, Everything Yogurt & Salad Café, Great Steak & Potato Company, to Sakkio Japan, Sbarro, Subway, and Wendy's. For dessert and refreshments, don’t forget to visit Auntie Anne's Pretzels, Haagen-Dazs, Mrs. Fields Cookies, or the Starbucks stand.
Some Useful Things
Sending letters or packages home has never been easier for international students who go to Adelphi. The Roosevelt Field mall is easily accessible thanks to the Adelphi shuttle bus service, and the lower level of the shopping center has a US postal office. The properly designated store Essentials Plus, as well as Metro Mart provide you with basic everyday things, such as toothpaste and shampoo, snacks, drinks, envelopes, and even birthday cards. The Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile stores make it easy for students to get cell phones and calling plans. So have yourself a merry little stroll through the mall any time!
For a full listing of the stores and restaurants in Roosevelt Field Mall, please click here.
It’s a nice, sunny weekend day and you find yourself with nothing to do. You’re too broke to go to Manhattan, and even though there’s always something to do in the City, you have no idea where to go and spend as little money as possible. But still, the sun is calling you outside. One of the options you have as a resident of Adelphi University’s main campus is to take a short 20-minute walk to 7th Street and Franklin Avenue, two delightful streets with a European flare in the heart of Garden City.
7th Street |
7th Street
Your little adventure will first bring you to 7th Street, a nice mix of America, due to its numeric designation, and Europe, thanks to the posh little restaurants, cafes, stores, and banks, located right next to each other. Here, you can find the street’s namesake, a nice Italian restaurant called 7th Street Café, and the American bistro Walk Street. Some of the other eateries include an Edible Arrangements store, offering fresh and healthy flowery-looking displays, made out of fruit. There is also a Starbucks, in case you need to make your coffee refill, or are in the mood for something sweet. A TCBY store will offer a variety of healthy yoghurt-based products, including pies, cakes, and smoothies. Stuff and Things, the Garden City Shoe Shop, and a little Antiques shop are also worth exploring.
Franklin Avenue |
Franklin Avenue
Enter Wonderland. Reach the end of the 7th Street sidewalk you’ve been walking on, and take a left. You’ll find a plethora of ethnic restaurants, as well as cute little shops that will fill European hearts with excitement. Miniature Manor is one of the most interesting shops on the street. Enter, and you will find something that closely resembles the dream of every girl between 5 to 10 years old. Hand-made Victorian mansions and houses with a Mediterranean flare, miniature furniture for every room, and little dolls to fill the house make a beautiful sight for your eyes and let your imagination run wild. You’ll feel like you’ve entered a museum, so act accordingly. Look, dream, and do not touch, those little things can be quite fragile.
Delight Your Senses with Ethnic Cuisines
Getting a little homesick or just in the mood to taste something different? Franklin Avenue offers a great choice of ethnic restaurants: Asian, Italian, Greek, or Belgian, you name it. Asian places like Asian Moon, Jin East, and Sushi Ya will satisfy your tastes for the cookery of the East. Eateries including Calageros, Grimaldi’s Coal Brick-Oven Pizzeria, and Garden City Bistro will proffer you a nice choice of Italian cuisine. The Greek Wild Fig Mediterranean Grill will fool your tasting sense into thinking you’ve traveled to one of the legendary Greek islands, while Waterzooi Belgian Bistro will ease your imaginary visit to the country where they make some of the best chocolate in the world. If it’s sweets you’re craving, don’t hesitate to go to the Italian Leonetti Pastry Shop or to Cold Stone Creamery—if you love chocolate, try the German-chocolatekake, it’s the best.
Hope and despair may abut in the minds of young foreigners coming to study in New York, knowing that they basically have to reboot their lives. Regardless if they had bank accounts, cars and car insurances, health insurances, or phone bills to pay in their home countries, they all have to start off with a clean slate. For diligent, hard working students, this is a chance to gain more independence and learn how the world works. What’s even more promising is that everyone has equal chances in the land of opportunities. To get you started, here’s some useful information for daily life.
Open a Bank Account and Keep It Safe
Don’t worry; you won’t have to sleep with your money under your mattress. You won’t even have to scout out a bank to deposit your cash in; Adelphi will bring the banks to you. During the first week of the semester, some of the local banks, including the Bank of New York, Chase, The State Bank of Long Island, and Citibank come to campus to open accounts for incoming students. As an international student, you will need to show your passport, I-20, and Adelphi ID, and you’re all set. Remember to ask for a checking and a savings account, to be able to start saving those pennies right away. Accessing your debit card means spending your own money, so there are a few safety tips you should always keep in mind. Never give away or write down your debit card PIN or account number; be careful where you give your debit card number online; and try not to give your debit card in a restaurant because you never know when someone might decide to jot down your card number. You can also write “see ID” on the back of the card, in place of your signature, to make sure you’re always identified to minimize the unfortunate event of identity theft. The best medicine is to keep track of your balance activities often and thoroughly. For more information on banks, visit Citibank, HSBC, Chase, Bank of America and Commerce Bank.
Join the Network
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint: which one’s the most convenient network for you? Parents usually make this decision for students in the U.S., but what about the international students? Cell phone companies will require foreigners such as yourself to make a deposit of a few hundred dollars to sign an activation contract, because of your inexistent credit history. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a phone if you don’t have a few hundreds to spare. To start off, international students usually use prepaid phones because of the lack of obligations to the phone networks, the small calling fees, and the requirement to pay only for the days they use their phones. The longer you’ve been here, the more you’ll realize that cell phone plans are like shirts: you have to find the one that fits you best. For more information on cell phone plans that do not require a credit history and a deposit, please visit Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile.
Getting Your Social Security Card
As you may know, international students are not allowed to work off campus, but they can work for one of the University’s offices or for Lackmann’s catering service. The provisional social security number every international student receives will not suffice for payroll, so you will have to go out and get a real social security card, for school purposes only. The best place to ask for information on how to go about doing this is the Office of International Student Services. You can also visit the social security site http://www.ssa.gov/ to explore and find out what information you need. The closest office to Adelphi is located at 211 Station Road, 5th floor, Mineola, New York. You can get there by taking the Adelphi shuttle bus to the Mineola train station.
Birds of a feather flock together, which is why most Europeans perceive the accents of native-English speakers in less than a handful of types, namely American, British, Irish, and Australian English. People from Africa and Asia may detect the same number of English accents, with slightly different variations in the particular types. But international students who come to Adelphi and immerse themselves in the heart of the New York metro-area are inundated with manifold English accents. Even the pronunciations of born and bred Americans differ from location to location. There’s the Long Island accent, the New York City accent, the Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx accents, and then there are the Indian, the Chinese, the Latin American accents, and the list goes on. Some people have the ability to change their local accents, and some just sound like they’re speaking “genuine” English, the one you sometimes hear in movies. Confused? Wait, there’s more. An astonishing point about the human mind and its abilities to juggle the peculiarities of languages is that from the medley of accents, one learns to pinpoint who’s from a certain geographic area and who’s from elsewhere. If you think you’re a quiet observer casting a critical eye on the new environment surrounding you, you’re far from reality. Even though fellow Europeans, Asians, or Africans may think you emulate the American English accent rather well, native speakers can easily deduce you’re not from around, and may throw phrases like “I detect an accent” or “Where are you from?” at you.
We all know that the United States has always been a little different from the rest of the world, which is part of the charm that draws so many people here. But international students may be surprised by how different it really is in small aspects of everyday life.
Measurements
Most European, Asian, and African countries use the metric system (also known as the International System of Units), which involves measuring weight in grams, length in meters, distance in kilometers, volumes in liters, and temperature in Celsius degrees. The United States, on the other hand, measures weight in pounds, length in inches, distance in miles, volume in gallons, and temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re wondering how this came about, it all goes back to the 18 th century Europe, when France and England were struggling to show the world who was best. The French managed to expand their measuring system to all the other European countries, except England, which kept to its own. The British later joined the rest of the world, but the United States, along with Liberia and Myanmar, kept the old English measurements.
Power Sockets and Plugs
One thing that is common to the United States, and virtually the rest of the world, is the use of volts to measure electricity. Still, underneath the smooth surface of universality lie many discrepancies. The U.S. and the rest of North America use alternating current, while the rest of the world uses direct current. Furthermore, power sockets in the U.S. fuel electric appliances with 110 to 120 volts at 60Hz, while power sockets in Europe gear up electric utilities with 220 to 240 volts at 50Hz. A little bit confusing at first, but it can all be solved by buying a voltage converter. People coming to North America also face the problem of not being able to fit their chargers in the power sockets because they are shaped differently than in their home countries. Travel adapters are the answer to that problem. One should always be sure to use the travel adapter with the voltage converter, because even though the appliances may work at first, they are likely to suffer power surges, while receiving a different type of electrical power influx. Click here for more information.
Cell Phones
As an international student, I’ve discovered that European cell phones do not work in the U.S., and vice versa. It’s because European countries and most of the world use the GSM (Global Systems for Mobile Communications) network, whereas many companies in the U.S. do not. There is also a difference in frequency bands because American cell phones use the 1900 MHz and the 850 MHz bands for the GSM service, while the rest of the world uses cells that work on the 900 MHz frequency band and/or the 1800 MHz GSM service. To solve the problem, international students can use their foreign cell phones in their home countries, and buy cell phones that work in the U.S. to use here. The alternative is to buy a quad band phone, which supports all four frequency bands, but is more expensive and difficult to find. For more information, visit Click here for more information.
Time Zones Differences and Jet Lag
"Where am I? What time is it? Is it today or tomorrow?" These are questions any international student may ask the first time he or she wakes up in one of the rooms in one of Adelphi’s residence halls. For most international students, coming to the U.S. means traveling through time and gaining a few more hours, from five hours for African-native students, seven for Eastern Europeans, nine and a half for Indian students, 12 hours for the Chinese, to 13 hours for Japanese students. And then, there’s jet lag. I find that the best way to fight it is to try to sleep approximately 12 hours after you get settled in your new residence. When you go back home for the break, never make travel arrangements to come back a day before school starts. Flights may be canceled or delayed, and you wouldn’t want to go to class straight from the airport. Besides, one always needs time to unwind, to be able to start the semester with a rested mind.
As a stranger to these places, I can avow that most of the people I've interacted with in New York City and on Long Island were friendly, polite, and eager to help. On my first day in New York, the zipper of one of my large transatlantic travel suitcases was jammed, but the father of my new roommate was kind enough to offer to open it for me. During one of my first trips to the City, after ascending from the subway hole in the classic pose of a tourist frantically finding one's location on a map, I must have looked a bit dazzed and confused, so a nice elderly woman stopped, shot me a smile, and asked if I knew where I was going. Not to mention many of my American peers have befriended me immediately, and some, like two of my roommates, have even invited me into their homes so I wouldn't be lonely for Thanksgiving. When you're surrounded by such pleasant people, it doesn't feel like you're thousands of miles away from home.
Moving to a new country is like transferring to a new school: you don't know anyone, you have to make new friends, and learn how things work to adapt to the new environment. Most of the students who come to the United States have to cross an ocean to come here, whether their journey to America begins from Europe, Asia, or Africa. But fitting in New York isn't all that difficult. It has always been one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse places in the United States, because immigrants from faraway countries pass through here. It's no wonder that the cab drivers, salespeople, and other public servers are not surprised when they detect a foreign accent, and are always eager to know where you're from and to engage in chitchat about your home country. Today, foreigners come here from all over the world on business, to visit family members, or just briefly experience New York City. Thanks to Hollywood movies, which have heavily publicized American culture, you will not experience a terrible culture shock as an international student coming here for the first time. Rather, you may have the energizing feeling that you've just stepped into one of the famous New York movie scenes, and you might just live the American dream.
I've just returned from my trip to Europe, where I've been country-hopping from Romania to Greece and Poland with my family and my cat Matzi, who now carries a passport because he is required to have one to travel in the European Union. It still amazes me that we live in a world in which I can relax on a wonderful beach, visit a beautiful Greek city and its old harbor, and climb up a mountain to see a 16th century Venetian fortress in Crete, have breakfast with my family in Romania, and then wake up in New York City, all in a week's time. But, as they say, all roads lead to Rome, or in the cases of international students such as myself, to Adelphi University. Like other American institutions of higher education, this university helps to achieve the enduring ethnic and racial diversity of the United States by opening its doors to students from all over the world. International students are primarily drawn to Adelphi because of the university's main campus in Garden City, a short 45-minute train ride to Manhattan, which offers a plethora of culture, entertainment, and professional opportunities.
This page last modified on September 5, 2008.
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- Explore Your Surroundings with the
Adelphi Shuttle Bus
- Roosevelt Field Mall: An Entire Universe
- Have a Little Weekend Fun
- Getting Started...
- Accents, Accents Everywhere
- Surprise, Surprise
- Who Says New Yorkers Aren't Friendly?
- First Time In the US
- Adelphi's Global Community
Romanian Ruminations is written by
Ana Barbu.
Originally from Alba-Iulia, Romania, a city forged on the ruins of the Roman settlement Apulum, I am a communications and political science major. I have always been fascinated with music, writing, history, cats, and fairy tales. Currently a student writer for the Office of Public Affairs, production editor and staff writer for the Delphian, Adelphi's student newspaper, secretary of the Pre-Law Society, and member of the International Student Society at Adelphi University, I am a junior in the Honors College. My dream is to one day write for Rolling Stone, covering the likes of Radiohead, Snow Patrol, and the Cardigans. Lending an ear to today's music scene, writing, and playing with my clever cat Matzi are some of the ways I like to spend my free time.
Matzi, on the kitchen table, holding his passport just before we went country-hopping.
Matzi dozing off at the dinner table.
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