Airline Pilot Central Forums - Looking for a Great FBO Anywhere in U.S.

Hi. I have been reading through many posts in this forum for about 2 weeks now. I am interested in this career. I have read through [The Truth About the Profession] and I am aware of the downside. My background is B.S. in electrical engineering from UIUC. I am 28 and I am planing to change career. I am also a Chinese citizen but is expecting to get green card in 1.5 years. I am currently in China.

I have 2 friends in the aviation. They told me the only way to find out whether I will like it is to take the PPL lesson first. While I do consider academies with great reputations like Aerosim/Flight Safety Academy, they are on the pricey side and I am not willing to commit yet. I understand both of them offer a professional package course but I wish to do my PPL first.

So I am looking for great instructors in a well operated FBO anywhere in US that takes international students and runs part 141 program. If the experience is great enough, I might choose to either stay with the FBO with all certification or change to Aerosim/FS for later course. I want to get experience in flying in the mountains as well if possible, but that is a soft requirement. I am not in a great hurry but I do wish to get all my certification done in 2 years ideally in 1.5 years. I hope to fly as much as possible in my training and I want weather to be least of the issue. But that doesn't mean I won't fly bad weather. I want to experience different weather in my instrument training and ideally in a mountain environment. I just don't want to get grounded all the time and delay my training unnecessarily because of the weather.

While there are a lot of posts on the forum, I couldn't find many post about reputable small FBOs. That's why I started this thread. Thank you very much for the info. And if I do miss a thread about the same topic, I apologize for my ignorance.