The chaos of traveling. The mixed emotions of leaving your family. The fear and excitement of that moment when the plane takes off and it all becomes real. We’ve shared several stories of what it’s like to arrive in the U.S. for the first time, but perhaps none as vivid as this, submitted by Keith Mushonga. Keith arrived this past fall to study English and French at Winthrop University, and the  journey to get there was a whirlwind adventure all its own. Here’s what he wrote:

When I got off the plane in Washington, D.C., I found myself in a fast-paced world. People were streaming back and forth like disco lights in the mumbo-jumbo of a New York night life. Young kids were banging their way past me, ogling at me like a nuisance. Everyone seemed to know where they were going. I felt lost with my thick-rimmed spectacles, my small backpack and my overactive imagination.

“Oh my… I’m gonna get lost! I’m gonna get lost!” I thought, as people trotted out of the Ethiopian Airlines, with cellphones clung to their ears.

“And so Jimmy dont forget to pick me up in thirty minutes…”

“Sasha.. Josh…??”

“Andrew!!! You what???”

They were calling their families and friends and telling them that they’d come back home from Africa. They’d seen lions, giraffes, warm smiles and clear azure skies. They’d been on safaris in splendid Savannah forests that stretch for eons like green carpets.

I, on the other hand, had just left home in Africa. I’d found myself in a meandering maze of unfamiliar faces, foods and sounds. I clung onto my backpack like it was my life. Then I resorted to following everyone else. I soon ended up in a long snaking immigration line, being watched by a barrage of cameras. They stared at me like a criminal. I was waiting for my passport to be stamped, and I hoped that I wasn’t going to be deported and sent straight home…

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Tomoko has been living in New Hampshire since last August, studying child development at Southern New Hampshire University, and enjoying herself. There’s only one thing she really dislikes about her new life in the U.S., and she wrote in to share her one big disappointment:

Hello, America! You are too sweet.

Hello, America, I came to you, the place I had been longing for. You had influenced my life too much by using a strong tool called mass media. The language that you are using is too powerful for me to neglect to learn. When you stare at me with your blue eyes, I want to dive into your blue ocean. When your blond hair flutters in the wind, I want to dive into your gold wheat field.

But, now I have to confess to you one thing: you are too sweet. You put too much sugar in your cake.

Red velvet cupcake was your cake’s name. When I saw it on some New Yorker’s blog after coming to you, I just felt in love with its vivid color and cute shape with its snowy mountain top.

Red velvet cupcake (Creative commons image by Flickr user Sarah-Rose)

When I enter the supermarket, I am overpowered by its huge space. I am fascinated with the colorful cereal boxes lined up in an aisle. I am thrilled to take a number to order a pound of today’s ham or cheese. I stop and watch a roasted chicken spinning for a while. I found your cake in the bakery. I was so excited when I saw the real one. Red velvet cupcake. I put it into a big cart without hesitation. I have to go home to try your cake now.

It is like a lady with red puffy dress and white hat. I hardly wait to eat! I open my big mouth and bite the red dress and white hat together …

My brain reels as my imagination of red velvet comes tumbling down. The cake tastes as if I were eating pure sugar, and the frosting is sandy-feeling from the grains.

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When I left home for the first time it did not occur to me that I would never be able to return to it again. I don’t mean ‘return’ in the literal sense, but in the sense that something happens between the moment that you leave a place and go back to it that irrevocably changes how you perceive things, that renders the familiar objects of ‘home’ into something distant, unattainable –  something of the past.

Like so many others, I left home when I was 18, and while I had been told many things about leaving, I did not know anything about what, exactly, it would mean to return.

When I left home for the first time, I didn’t think about looking back. I was only worried then about where I was going, how to begin a new life. What I did not know then – and what I know now – is that the pain of departure is far easier to bear than the pain of return.

Trip one

The first time I went home was the summer I turned 20. I was studying abroad in Paris and had become increasingly, quietly, desperate. I had grown tired of cathedrals, café crèmes, and the decay of Europe. I had been away for nearly two years, and ‘home’ had become nothing more than a nebulous image in my head, an absence rather than a place I longed for. The summer lay before me, empty and unplanned, and in a moment of panic, I decided to return to Thailand.

Going home that first time was an experiment: I wasn’t sure what to expect, and whether I was going to experience Thailand as a tourist, or as a resident. I had been away for so long that when I stepped into the Thai citizen line at Suvarnnaphumi airport, I could barely speak. The language felt unfamiliar and foreign, and the words garbled in my mouth.

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It is hard to live in one place knowing that somewhere there is another place to which you belong. You always wonder what you are missing or whether you would be better off at the other place. The idea that once you go back everything will be different and you won’t fit in anymore often crosses your mind. You are not only afraid of the possibility that once you go back the physical place itself won’t feel like home anymore, but even more so that the friends who used to be a substantial part of your life will not accept you back once you spend so much time away.

Being so far from home, I really struggled at first with how to get on with building a life in this new place without feeling like I was abandoning my life from home.

When I first arrived in the United States, I wrote messages home every day. I reported everything that happened to me, I consulted my friends on everything I did, and I wanted them to rely on me to the same extent as they did before I left.

Soon after classes started I just could not keep up with reporting every single minor event in my life, because I didn’t have enough time. The unexpected realization I would not be able to keep up my friendships the way I wanted made me feel lonely.

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Rin Ichino is a Japanese exchange student from the University of Tokyo spending a year at Bates College in Maine. When she arrived, she found that there was something about her new campus life that made her uneasy – the lack of chores. From cleaning the buildings to emptying the trash, there are maintenance staff to take care of almost everything.  But is her discomfort about it a difference between the Japanese and American cultures, or something else? Here’s Rin’s story:

On the first day I arrived at Bates College, I found myself alone in my new house. I was the only one of the twelve students who would be living there to arrive before classes started. Every room was empty, dark, and quiet as I walked around the house by myself.

It was a hot day for the end of August in Maine, and after going in and out of a couple of rooms looking for an air conditioner, I heard a cheerful voice asking, “Hey, how can I help you?”

My house. This picture was taken in the fall – the house doesn’t look as pretty as this now because of the dirty snow.

I turned to find a woman with bright blue eyes in a blue shirt and blue jeans. She was the housekeeper for my house, with two other houses under her care. We introduced ourselves and by the time she finished showing me around the house we had made friends. She told me I wouldn’t need to clean the house, buy our daily goods, or worry about messes after parties. She would not come to our house everyday but told me to ask her for any help I needed.

Living the easy life

Once everyone else arrived on campus and the year got started, it didn’t take much time for me to find that this situation was not unusual. I need to do almost nothing for myself in this campus life.

I can run into the dining hall almost anytime and fetch anything to eat and drink; I can grab a mug with coffee or tea and throw the empty mug into one of the big cans placed all around campus. I don’t need to clean, I don’t need to take the garbage out, I don’t need to do my dishes, I don’t need to go shopping for food. All those things are in the facility service staffs’ hands.

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Muslim students at Rutgers University in New Jersey (Photo: AP)

When I started the process of applying to undergraduate schools in the United States, I never thought about whether America would be a welcoming place for a young Muslim student. I read articles that talked about the diverse America, the melting pot America, and the land of dreams America.

I had conversations with friends who were already studying at American institutions; they reassured me that there was nothing for me to worry about.

When I received my acceptance letter from the College of St. Scholastica, a Catholic school in a very small town in northern Minnesota, I did not even look up how many Muslims go to the school.

But maybe I should have looked for these answers. Muslims have a lot of differences from Christians. Like Jews, Muslims are not supposed to eat pork, and we can only eat Halal meat. Halal meat is meat slaughtered or prepared in the manner specified by Islamic law. Muslims do not drink alcohol at all. We also pray five times a day between sunrise and late evening, and must be cleaned and showered before each prayer.

If you are studying in the States right now, look around and see if your campus is warm and welcoming to Muslim students. Is there an Islamic center or a mosque? How about even just a small prayer room? Does your cafeteria know that Muslims do not eat pork? How many special dishes for Muslims do they make for every meal? Let me help you by mentioning some food that contains pork: pepperoni pizza, sausage, hot dogs, ham.
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“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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The fifth in a series looking at U.S. life and culture through its idioms.  View previous entries.

Like apples and oranges = completely different from each other, not comparable

How to say hello? Maybe with a sign!

One thing I was confident about before I arrived in the U.S. was that I knew how to greet people there.I come from a Latin American country where we keep a very close physical distance, we touch and hug continuously, and kiss hello, even with a person we’ve just met. I was prepared to curb that practice in the U.S. and was sure I’d greet Americans with a wave and a light-hearted, “Hi.”

But oh, did I find unexpected scenarios!

Since I arrived, I’ve been able to pick up on a lot of the common greeting patterns, like shaking hands with people I’m being introduced to and answering “I’m good” instead of the long-practiced “fine, thanks.”

But it turns out there are lots of greeting patterns, and deciding which one to use can be curious and confusing. Some people you’ve met a couple of times, or even your friends, will go for the smile and “Hi,” but others will give you the typical “American hug” and some even kiss!

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one. If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#4
Why do International Students Crave Food From Home?
Contributions from Mohammed al-Suraih, Sebastian Sanchez, Javaria Khan

A common complaint among international students is how much they miss their native cuisine, so it’s no surprise that one of our most popular posts of 2012 was one examining just what it is about food that makes it so important to international students.

We learned that food interacts with your brain in some unique ways. Not only do you start forming your food preferences before you’re even born, so that by the time you study abroad some of your tastes for native food are pretty deeply engrained, but food is also deeply tied to memory, so nostalgia and food cravings become intertwined.

Read it: “3 Things You Don’t Know About Food and Why International Students Crave Cuisine From Home“

But one of the most interesting things we learned about food is that what you eat is part of who you are; food and identity are linked together.

In fact, one reason why international students miss native food so much is because they’re also missing the stable sense of identity they had back home.  Studying abroad redefines your sense of who you are, what you want, and what you believe, and it can be a difficult process.

We saw just how difficult in Senzeni’s examination of how her self image changed during a year in the States, one of our most moving posts of 2012. ”The certainty I once had about what I wanted to see and achieve is gone, the answers replaced by more and more questions about myself and my path,” she wrote.

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Before I left for the U.S., I attended all the orientations about what life would be like there.  I heard tons of useful advice about how to prepare, what to pack, and what to expect.   And like most people, I scoffed at some of that advice.  But boy I wish I hadn’t!

Settling into Indiana was not as easy as I thought it would be, and I quickly began to regret not listening to the suggestions of what to bring with me from home.  Here are the top 3 things I really wish I had brought, and the advice you shouldn’t ignore when it’s time for your orientation.

1. Toiletries

Not packing toiletries such as lotion and soap from home was the first thing I greatly regretted. I am ashamed to say that when the helpful ladies at the EducationUSA orientation gave us this advice, I laughed at it. “I am going to America, where everyone has great skin and looks (and probably smells) good, and everything costs US$1,” I thought. “I will buy it there.”

Unfortunately, when I arrived in Indiana it turned out the supermarket is very far from where I live and only accessible by bus.

When I finally figured out the bus route and managed to get there, I was bombarded by more choices in face wash, lotions, cleansers, and all manner of soaps than I had ever seen in my life!

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Thailand’s Songkran water festival, held in April (Photo: Reuters). Is this part of my identity?

I still remember a conversation I had with my high school friends one day, when I told them that I wanted to study in the U.S.: “I don’t think I’d ever go there,” said one of my friends. “It seems too liberal and dangerous.”

I also remember another moment, when I was at a store with my mother, and she had told the shopkeeper that I attended an international school: “Learning English is a good skill, but I don’t think I want my kids in that kind of school,” he said. “I don’t want them to be Westernized.”

Although I attended an American international school, few of my friends actually went abroad for college. Most stayed in Thailand, a handful went to colleges either in England or Australia, and I was the only one to go to the U.S. The prevailing attitude was that while, sure, the U.S. offered a good education, it was just a bit too far, too expensive, and too different. When one of my friends expressed interest in going to an American college, her parents dissuaded her, saying that they wanted her closer by.

To me, getting away was the exactly the point; staying in Thailand was the last thing on my mind. I had graduated from high school, seen all my close friends leave, and was overcome by the feeling that I was done with it all – that there was absolutely nothing left for me in Thailand, and there was nowhere to go but away.

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- How are you?
– Good. You?
– Pretty good.
– That’s good.

This was an actual exchange between two students sitting at my table in the dining hall. When I heard it, I literally burst out laughing and quipped, ”Well, that was a meaningful conversation.” Maybe I was being a bit insensitive but, although I have lived in the U.S. for more than two years and know this is a normal conversation, it still strikes me as odd.

One of the most challenging aspects of being an international student is that you not only have to master a foreign language, but also to recognize the meaning that hides behind the words.

Almost every day I am asked, “How are you?” or “How are you doing?” I’m expected to respond, “Good” or “Fine,” and ask the other person how they are, to which they will also respond, “Good.”

To this day, this style of greeting strikes me as an abuse of a question with which people show care and concern to one another in my culture. When somebody asks, “How are you?” in Hungary, I assume that person is truly interested in my well-being and wants to listen to what I have to share.

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November 16, 2011. Mohammed has been studying in Minnesota for just about 3 months. “Oh man I miss my mom’s delicious white spicy rice,” he laments. “Oh my god I miss my favorite Iraqi dish, Biryani.”

Sebastian has been in the U.S. for well over a year when he realizes, “I still can’t stand a day without craving the most simple things I used to have back home: meals as simple as plain white rice with potatoes and chicken.”

There are plenty of things you know to worry about when coming to study in the U.S. “How can I relate to people from all over the world?” fretted Tom. “Would I cope with speaking in English all of the time?” thought Simba. “Would I ever find anyone like [my uncle] in America?” Senzeni asked herself, in tears at the airport in Zimbabwe.

But “one thing I never thought about [before leaving home] was food,” said Mohammed; “how badly I would miss my mother’s dishes, and how food would be a huge part of my culture shock.”

Javaria even traveled all the way from Massachusetts to New York just to find a taste of the desi food she missed from South Asia.

But why does food all of a sudden become so important when you’re abroad? Why do so many international students cite food as the thing they miss most, even more than they mention their own families?

It turns out food has a more powerful role in our lives and our minds than you might imagine.  Here are three things you might not know about why you miss food from home while studying abroad:

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“I realized that whatever I said and whatever I did, I was helping create my classmates’ perception of what an Afghan person is,” wrote Abuzar last week of his experience studying at a U.S. high school.  He worked hard every second to “introduce Afghanistan through the eyes of my generation, a generation tired of the animosity and ignorance that had ruled Afghanistan, endeavoring to make the country a better place.”

He’s not the only one. Muhammad wrote in to say he had a similar experience when he went abroad for the first time, thanks to a scholarship to complete his high school education at the United World College in Costa Rica.

Muhammad Jaweed Ahmadi

I was expecting to face many challenges and new life experiences, but I had no idea how to prepare myself. All I knew was that I needed to attend the college if I wanted to achieve the ideal future life that I have always worked for. I did not want to think about whether or not I was going to be welcomed by the community.

Although the prejudice of the West towards Muslims and my country is not something new, the unexpected discrimination was much worse that I imagined. I found myself shocked when I heard a classmate saying, “When I hear the name Islam, terror, killings, aggressiveness, violence, and unequal rights, come to my mind.”
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