Meet Dhenig, 34, from São Paulo, Brazil
Written by Manmeet Sahni
Dhenig during a session of New Women New Yorkers’ LEAD Program.
Dhenig, a 34-year-old from São Paulo, Brazil, moved to the United States with her husband almost a year-and-a-half ago. One of the biggest challenges for Dhenig was overcoming the language barrier. She didn’t speak English before she came to the United States but converses in English now. This is her story, in her own words.
“We came to New York because my husband’s company transferred him to New York. When I came here, I studied six months at an English [language] school.”
Dhenig likes living in Manhattan and says she feels safer here than in São Paulo.
“I feel comfortable because [New York] has many people from the other cities, different accents. I talked to my friends and they ask many different questions about New York. I think they have some fantasy about New York. They think that here, everything is beautiful, everything is safe, and it’s cool as it’s New York!
“[The city] has three things that are better than Brazil. One thing is security, technology, because here you can access Internet on the street, on the subway. And [second is] the entertainment. Here you can do many different activities free. The immigrants have many educational activities to do for free, the place is near and you can take the subway. It’s not big traffic and the subway is not full all the time. But to live here is very expensive.”
One of the biggest challenges for Dhenig was to overcome the language barrier. She didn’t speak English before she came to the United States but converses in English now. She says it also took time to understand the cultural nuances.
“[Americans] are very different than the people of my country because at the first time I felt like, ‘Wow! They are cold and serious and they don’t care about me…’ This for me was difficult because Brazilians are warm and they talk and they touch. I remember a situation, when I was in the subway and I don’t know if I go for the right direction, and I touched one woman and said excuse me and she said, ‘Don’t touch me!’ and I said ‘Oh my God! Sorry!’ because I didn’t know that here people don’t like touching. But now I understand that this is cultural. When I try to touch people, hug people, I ask before, ‘Can I hug you? Can I touch you?’
“My husband and I expect a better life [in New York].”
