Image courtesy of Head Photographer, Natalie Richards ’27
Life as a college student can be challenging: the endless papers, balancing of exam schedules, and sharing of communal space in dorms. Yet, international students, who are thousands of miles away from home, face their own added set of challenges navigating life in America.
Beyond navigating new language, food, and social norms, international students arriving in America also face another challenge: the use of the imperial system. The metric system, used in all of the world’s countries except three, is based on an intuitive structure using powers of ten. By contrast, the imperial system is a patchwork of many different historical units: 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and so on. The use of mixed units can complicate understanding further; while height is measured in centimeters in the metric system, Americans predominantly measure height in both feet and inches. Unable to rely on intuitive scaling, and unfamiliar with the ratios between each set of units, international students often find themselves furiously Googling conversions to metric systems.
International students often come from densely populated countries with easy access to stores and around cities through public transportation. In Lancaster, however, without a car, things are not quite so accessible. For instance, our local Target can only be accessed by Uber or our Lancaster Loop shuttle service. Neither of these options are ideal: Uber costs add up quickly after two trips and tip, and the Lancaster Loop is only available for limited hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Similarly, move-in and move-out days can be difficult without a car; carrying lots of large suitcases on trains and in Ubers is tiring and the cost easily adds up.
If you ask any international student what they miss most from home, chances are their answer will be food. As much as we love discovering new dishes here, like seeing an endless cereal selection in a Target or picking up the same slice of pizza every night from DHall, sometimes, you can’t help but miss that cinnamon-y, star anise-y comfort flavor that tastes like home.
You feel the homesickness creep up on you in slow, but unexpected ways. It might not be the big cultural differences that hit the hardest, but the small ones. When you open the minifridge in your dorm and don’t see familiar sauces, hoisin, chili crisps, shrimp paste. Instead, a sad bottle of ketchup and a half-used tube of mustard stares back at you solemnly. Or, you start realizing that the closest thing to your favorite street food, that you could’ve once walked outside and bought, now comes in the last frozen box in the Asian Central Market’s freezer. It’s like your taste buds are also studying abroad, they’re trying their best, but sometimes they feel a little lost in translation.
When you’re 14,259 kilometers away, it’s the little things that take on big meaning. A familiar snack can feel like a hug from that sweet aunty you see once every three years on Lunar New Year. As the new kid on the block, You have to juggle both the ache of missing what you left behind at home, and the excitement of your new environment; everyday’s campus walk, building a second family that takes every meal together, a BBQ Bacon Burger from Flavors, or struggling with the ice cream machine that only works the first 15 minutes of dinner.
And yes, homesickness lingers. Sometimes it looks like midnight cravings you can’t satisfy, other times it’s just missing the comfort of hearing your own language across the dinner table. But in the end, to be an international student isn’t just about crossing that TSA scanner, or the really long immigration line, it’s about finding belonging in places you could’ve never seen yourself before. Whether that’s in the dining hall, the Asian market’s freezer aisle, the Amtrak that cancels on you at the last minute because your bags don’t fit the size requirements, and then lets you on again because apparently they have made an exception just for you, each moment adds a little flavor to the struggle of an international student here at F&M.
Freshman Milind Gavanker ’29 is a Contributing Writer. Their email is mgavanka@fandm.edu.
Freshman Andy Ha ’29 is a Contributing Writer. Their email is aha@fandm.edu.