I'm a foreigner living in a highly conservative state in midwest for grad school. I do get a lot of passive aggression. Only hang out with other grad students (highly liberal ones, skip the rest), ignore the locals, work your ass off, and gfto once you're done. You'll be fine trust me. Once you leave, you'll have a lifetime material to talk shit about wherever you lived haha I try to find humor as much as possible. Like when people ask me super strange questions about my country or say offensive things, I make up very extreme stories that confirms their stereotypes and laugh my ass off so they feel as dumb as possible lol Don't practice this with anyone who looks extremely redneck tho, just in case haha there was this one time I stopped at a very strange gas station in the middle of nowhere (legit horror movie location) full of trump and confederate flags, I had to pay at cashier bc of how old the placd was. The cashier instantly asked where I was from with a very angry and judgy face bc I have an accent. I was like "germany!" (I'm white so I knew she'd believe me considering that she'd never know how actual german people sound like hahah) her face literally lit up and was like "hell yeah I love Germany" I was like "of course you do hahahah" She didn't get it, but I had fun. Great thing about small town people is that they are very gullible. Enjoy that lol