Happy New Year!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a moment and say that New Years in New York? Freaking. Amazing.

What to Visit on the First Day in New York

All right. Let’s say you’re visiting New York. Let’s say it’s your first time visiting New York. You’ve never been here before and you have a ton of different things to go see and do and all of that. But you have no idea where to start.

Well, here’s what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t go to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. I mean, you should go there, but you shouldn’t try to do it all at the same time. Those places are tourist traps. They exist to shill you out of your money and they take forever. On top of that, all the tourists go there. Not only will you be stuck with lines and hours of waiting, but you’ll be stuck with every family’s idiosyncracies the entire time.

It’s not cool. I know this.

Instead, to start with, I’d probably go with places that are well-traveled that don’t have an admissions line to get in. I’m talking Central Park, Time Square, the Metropolitan, Grand Central Station, places like that.

Why to Study in New York

So, of all the places that you could go to study, why would anyone pick New York? Sure, it’s got a big city charm to it, but so does Riyadh, or Tokyo, or London, and they have the added benefit of being more civilized.

Why New York?

Because America is a very fascinating place. It captures the imagination of us who live in the rest of the world. But traveling all over the US is a complicated thing. You have many states, many cities, and large swathes of land. It would be possible to travel all over it, but it would take a long time, and I wasn’t interested in putting my studies on hold for mere travel.

I wanted to experience America in a microcosm - in a single place. New York City was that place. I could imagine nowhere else I would rather conduct my studies than here.

Meet Laith Salma

Laith Salma is a student on holiday in the US. As a young man from Saudi Arabia, he knows that America has an awful lot of things to offer in terms of experiences and adventures that he can have that he wouldn’t be able to find back home.
America is a land of opportunities. This is a place where people are allowed to bear arms and demonstrate against the government - both at the same time in some cases. This is a place where the greatest experiment in governance by the people is taking place.
It’s truly fascinating. Doubly so considering that America is the last of the great superpowers. Some may say that the time of American hegemony is coming to an end, and perhaps it should. But until that day comes, America remains a fascinating place, somewhere that’s worth seeing.
That is the draw of it to Laith Salma. It’s not that America is the greatest country in the world - not anymore. But it is the freest, the place of the fewest persecutions, the place with the most opportunity. You can study something here, and if you don’t like it, you can switch to something else. This is a place where you can make money just by being famous enough. That is so stupefyingly abnormal that most Americans can barely comprehend it.
It is a land of experimentation. It’s not a land where opportunities are available to everyone, sure, but there are far more of them than what he would find in other countries. He knew that. And that was precisely why he wanted to come here, over anywhere else, to see what he could make of himself.
He’s looking forward to a wild ride. Laith Salma hopes to bring back many stories of what happened to him while he was here.

Welcome to Laith Salma's Blog!

Welcome to the new site for Laith Salma!

Laith Salma is a student currently studying in New York City. Originally born in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, he has come to America because he believed in experiencing the very best that the world had to offer. He had some ideas about everything, and he has had the chance to keep trying them here when he couldn’t back home.