“I wish I had known that this would be such a huge adjustment,” wrote Reddit user forthelulzac about moving from America’s northeast to the southern state of South Carolina.

North v. south in terms of election results, scaled based on number of electoral votes (Creative commons image by Mark Newman, University of Michigan)

The comment sparked a flurry of agreement from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.  Americans from the north and the south might be citizens of the same country, but, at least according to those who responded to forthelulzac’s lamentation, they’re from two totally different cultures.

“[Meeting someone from New York] was the first time I had literally no clue what anything a person said or did meant.  I couldn’t tell how he felt about anything,” wrote southerner multirachael by way of explanation.  “For Southerners, everything, everything is in the subtext.”

Southerners have a complex system of rituals and social cues, she explained, contrasting this with the more upfront north.  “[I]f you come right out and say what you’re thinking, it’s considered aggressive, confrontational … If a Southerner labels you ‘rude,’ it’s pretty much the worst thing they can call you …”

“It’s about softening things.  It’s about having a ‘nice’ society. It’s about making things ‘pleasant.’”

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Rahela spent her junior and senior years of high school studying in Vermont, and is now starting at an American college. She shared this story about her first year in the U.S., which held more than its fair share of disappointments.

Click for full-sized image

The United States is a multi-cultural country that is famous as a melting pot. This country has many international students who came from different countries around the world. Some international students can’t get close to American students easily, and have a difficult time making American friends.

I was one of those students.

[Read more about the difficulties American and international students have in making friends]

I spent my junior and senior years of high school in the U.S. and had a hard time finding an American friend. I think one of the main reasons was my language. This problem is common in the first year of being international student in a foreign country.

It was hard to share my feelings and experiences with other students. Sometimes I was afraid I would use improper or unrelated words in my conversation that would embarrass me.

I remember one day I went to a doctor for an examination. The doctor said, “Ok! Now you’re here.” I thought that she said, “Ok! Now your hair,” and I immediately took off my head scarf. The doctor looked at me strangely and smiled. She realized that I misunderstood and said “No! No I mean you are in our building, in the hospital now. You are here.” I was a little bit embarrassed, but was pleased that she behaved kindly and tried to understand me.

Language is like an ocean – the learners need to swim in it in order to learn. I really wanted to improve my language by finding an American friend.

My religion was another thing that limited my relationships with students. As a Muslim female, I wear a scarf and have certain beliefs, and this created differences with my classmates. I could not be friendly with males and could not shake their hands.

[More about being Muslim in the U.S.]
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Admit it, you’re secretly dying to know what other people think of you – what they say behind your back that they would never say to your face. Do they really like you, or are they just being nice?

After some of our international student friends told us they’d love to know what their American classmates really think about them, we devised a way to find out – an anonymous survey.

Over 50 American students responded to our online questionnaire, sharing their most honest thoughts about international students.   Not to let the Americans off the hook, we also gave the survey to over 50 international students, and we’ll be discussing the responses in a series of posts all this week.

So, what did they have to say?

Let’s start by “ripping the Band-Aid off” (getting something painful done quickly). Here’s the worst comment we heard: “They smell bad and don’t speak English,” said an American student at North Dakota State University. “They are annoying.”

Take a deep breath. Are you still here? Are you okay?

American students at Ohio University talk to our blogger Olena about what they and their classmates think about international students

We also heard a lot of really positive things, like this comment from Noa* at Oberlin College, who said, “I think the international students on my campus are really interesting and wonderful people and a lot of times I feel that they are more grounded and well-rounded than American students.”

Or this one from Jacob at Washington and Lee University, “International students add so much more to a college campus. They have experiences that you could not possibly have, and make some of the best friends. The negatives are negligible.”

As is often the case, the reality of how Americans feel about international students is somewhere in between these two extremes.
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If you speak Chinese, this video that came across our Twitter feed today is well worth watching. An American Fulbrighter in China, Daniel Tedesco, speaks (to an audience including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and State Councillor Liu Yandong!) about the challenges of building connections in another country.

“…too many of us spend time mostly with our country-mates,” he says.  ”It’s easy for a Chinese student in the U.S. to eat Chinese food and go karaoke.  It’s comfortable for an American in China to eat pizza and hang out in cafes.”

He explains:

Spending time with local people throws us into a world of potential misunderstanding. We struggle to explain simple things. We don’t know when to laugh at jokes. It’s often hard just to keep up with the conversation. We might look silly and get laughed out.

But concludes:

Chinese and Americans abroad are putting aside what’s comfortable in order to do what’s meaningful. And we’ve reaped big rewards for doing so.
…
A single friend can change an experience abroad. A few more can change a life. But a great many can fortify and enrich U.S.-China relations for decades to come.

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Michigan State University very bravely posted this video, featuring a candid discussion among Chinese students and American students about the challenges in forming cross-cultural relationships. It prompted a lot of discussion among our bloggers over the weekend.

One person said that they agree that it can be difficult to form close relationships because Chinese and American students don’t always share the same interests (like American football). Someone else felt disheartened to hear some of the opinions from the American students, saying that it should be up to the American students just as much as the Chinese ones to open up communication and start building relationships. And a third said that schools don’t always do enough to facilitate this sort of relationship-building.

This question about the relationships between American and international students is something we’ve discussed before on this blog, and you may have seen in a recent post that we’re conducting a big survey on this topic (if you’re an American or international student, please TAKE THE SURVEY), so we’ll have a lot more insights to share soon.

In the meantime, watch this video and see what you think. Does it leave you feeling positive or negative about relations between American and international students? What do you think these students could or should have done to improve communication? Leave a comment and let us know!

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What do American students think about their international classmates? Do they like them, shun them or feel indifferent?

Our bloggers have shared their own experiences making friends in the U.S., and most said that American students are eager to learn about foreign countries and customs. Nareg wrote, for example:

I am happy to say that outright discrimination or prejudice have never been a problem for me. What I have noted most of all is plain ignorance, simply a lack of information on other cultures, religions, and traditions, a gap which I am always more than happy to close when it comes to things pertaining to Armenians.

Jamal wrote, “I found that people wanted to know about Kyrgyzstan’s geography and culture, and in particular, people were curious if Kyrgyz culture is similar to Europe’s, or to the Asian culture instead.”

But while talking to Americans and getting to know each other is easy, forming lasting friendships has proved harder for some of our bloggers. We’ve heard plenty of great stories about American students sharing their Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions with their international student friends, but we’ve also been told that international students tend to hang out with other international students. And both Tara and Qian, who are from China, said that they find certain aspects of American social life offputting. According to Tara:

…the culture differences between Asia and America is bigger than I expected – generally, I do not think people gathering together just to drink is fun, and from my personal perspective, I do have much interest to join the so-called American parties.

So what’s the truth? We need YOU to help us find out.
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I’m Chinese, but kinda American.

Since August 16, 2008, the day I arrived in the United States, I have been asked thousands of times, “Where are you from?” For most Chinese students studying abroad, the automatic answer would be, “Yea, China of course!” However, for some, it is not as simple as the nationality presented on their red, Chinese passports.

This summer, a Chinese friend of mine from Syracuse University visited me in Beijing after spending a semester studying abroad in Europe with a few American students. “I enjoyed my stay in Spain so much last semester,” she told me, speaking in Mandarin Chinese interspersed with some English terms. She showed me pictures of various parties with other American students, and said, “The American culture I adopted last semester was more than what I had tried for the past three years. I feel I’m so American right now and I nearly forgot how to speak Chinese when I just came back to China from Spain.”

I felt happy for her for feeling comfortable “being so American.” However, her words left me in deep thought as well; do we, Chinese students studying in the US, have to “act like Americans” in order to live comfortably in this country?

My freshman year, I had a culture clash with my American roommate and felt very isolated from the American students in the dorm. The reason was simple: I didn’t party with them, nor did I talk to them often.

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“Remember to keep warm when you get there. America is a cold place. And to call us daily. Don’t forget us.”

Brunch at an American dining hall (Creative Commons photo by Flickr user superfem)

These very words were the ultimate installment in a long series of many, many snippets of well-meaning advice from aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, cousins, passers-by, cousins of those passers-by, and anyone else who had caught wind of the fact that I was, indeed, going to America.

I had been warned about things such as the perceived perils of overeating when I got there, and it had been predicted that once I tasted that delicious American food, I would surely eat too much of it until I fell ill or exploded.

Would I cope with speaking in English all of the time? No, it was hypothesized that I would surely forget I was in North America and I would end up confusing my American friends by cracking jokes to them in my native language while still expecting them to laugh at those jokes.

And what of the cold? Would I survive? I would never cope with all that ice! After all, America is colder than the deep freezer! (an actual quote).

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Am I the one? Am I the Promise who promised himself his Nigerian accent was not going to take a slip? I never would have believed I could so easily twist my tongue in an American twang.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Yawn!

You might be asking, “How has the experience been so far?” I have been doing well – yawning like 50 times a day (not exaggerating). I haven’t slept for a total of 12 hours for the past three days I have been in Minneapolis. Could it be heat? The excitement? Maybe you can help me with that.

Tonight is one reason.

It’s 11:39 pm here, and I can picture you forming a question like, “Why is this dude not sleeping at this time?” Well, I have been asking myself that question too; but you’ll laugh when you find out why.

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Part of our Student Union family

Before summer vacation started, a bunch of our bloggers got together (via Skype) to chat about how their experiences over the past school year – the ups and downs, challenges and victories, and what they learned.

We had some fantastic conversations, even digging into a few topics we hadn’t really covered in the blog posts – AND they agreed to let me record the Skype call so you all could listen in.

Our first of two phone calls is below (with links to download if you’d rather do that). I am SO excited to share this with you!

Conversation #1: Pete and Repeat are on a Boat

Or download the mp3.

In this first conversation, Nareg, Alex, Jaime and I talk about integrating into American society, including a hysterical discussion about jokes that define cultures and jokes that cross cultures. “Resident sociologist” Nareg also talked about America’s relative wealth and why that means many people have silly problems, and Alex discussed being an African among African-Americans.

Plus, Sebastian popped in late in the discussion to answer questions about how he got his financial aid package to KU, and how he turned around a quiet first semester to blossom into a social butterfly.

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On his blog about life at Berkeley College in New York, blogger Jose Navarro debates whether having an accent is a positive or a negative for international students in the US.

He writes of his English language skills:

Now, it’s not that I have a problem with the language, but I do (as most of the people from Spain) have an accent.

In New York it’s not uncommon to hear many different accents from all across the world, but Jose writes that his accent still gets noticed.

I know no one would do it on purpose, but after having done your work, prepared whatever you wanted to say, gather the courage to stand in front of people to speak and hear someone ask “oh, so you’re from Barcelona? you have an accent” is not so pleasant.

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Continuing our look back at the top posts of the past school year, here are your…

Top 5 most shared posts on Facebook and Twitter:

#1) Transforming from Passive Student to Active Advocate: Shu Wen’s Story

They talked about how free the U.S. education is and they talked about liberal arts education where if you are undecided of what your major is you can try a couple of disciplines first until you find your passion. It kind of struck me, so I just took my chance and applied to several schools in the U.S., and finally got in.

#2) Do You Know How to Give an ‘American Hug?’

Topics covered: (1) How to recognize an American; (2) how to greet an American you’ve just met; (3) how to greet an American after having a few beers.

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As the academic year comes to an end and summer vacation begins, we’ll take a look back at the past school year and share some of your favorite posts…and some of our favorites too!  So stay tuned over the next week or so for a bunch of lists recapping the best of the past school year. Starting with…

The top 5 most viewed posts of 2010-2011:

#1) International Student in Japan Recounts Earthquake Experience: ‘I was so astonished and panicked’, by Seungmin Bang

Photo: AFP

It’s like a movie, something like a disaster film. This is my very first time to undergo such a severe earthquake in Japan. Since never having experienced an earthquake like this, my other international friends and I was so astonished and panicked. On the contrary to this, other Japanese people were relatively calm.

We also spoke several times to Kana Igarashi, a Japanese student studying in California.  Kana’s family was in Fukushima, and she talked about their experience in the earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis.

#2) How to Speak English Fluently?, by Nick Hoang

I’m not exaggerating in saying that American movies and music were my principal English teachers in 9th grade. I would buy CDs of Westlife and Britney Spears, download the lyrics and sing along to the songs.

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Though it feels like most people talk about improving their career prospects or getting a better education when they discuss why they want to study in the U.S., in an informal survey on our Facebook page, the majority of you said the cultural experience of studying abroad was the most important reason to study overseas.

Cultural Immersion

Cheerleaders at George Mason (Creative commons photo by Flickr user J Rosenfeld)

For Nareg, it was the “spirit of adventure” that drove his decision to come to the U.S.:

The experience of it all was definitely a major factor: to be away from family and friends, in an unknown environment, is just the kind of adventure which would educate more than any book or lecture could.

Farima agrees.  She says her initial motivation for coming to the U.S. as a high school student was to get a better education, but over time it has been the cultural exposure that has kept her here:

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