2022 LSU Gumbo - Book - Page 99
Peter Allen, a native of England, has been infatuated
with American culture since his family visited New York
City in 2017.
“Visiting there for a week-long holiday was what really
kickstarted my whole interest in thinking ‘hey, maybe I can
study this country,’” Allen said.
When it was time for Allen to study abroad, he chose
LSU from a list of nearly 50 American universities offered
by the University of Sussex.
All Allen really knew about Louisiana and LSU
were its Cajun cuisine and famous athletic alumni like
Shaquille O’Neal and Pete Maravich. But in the end, it
was Louisiana’s culture and southern hospitality that
made Baton Rouge the place he wanted to call home for a
semester.
“I wanted a good cultural atmosphere regarding food,
music and sport, which Louisiana tops in my opinion,”
Allen said.
This semester, LSU is the temporary home to 1,520
international students, according to LSU spokesman Ernie
Ballard.
While Allen purposefully selected LSU, Mimi Baral
came to LSU by chance.
While Baral always wanted to come to America to study,
having grown up on a steady diet of American films and
television, she had no specific reason for choosing LSU
until she landed in Baton Rouge.
She began studying with the university’s IT department
and found a job working with the International Cultural
Center on campus as a student worker.
“That’s how I met people. I just made conversation with
them so it wasn’t particularly hard for me,” Baral said. “I’d
like to think I was lucky.”
The ICC exists on LSU’s campus to “promote
internationalization at LSU, foster friendships, and facilitate
greater interaction and understanding among international
students at LSU and the Capital Area community,” their
website reads.
“Part of our goal at the ICC is to bridge that cultural
divide between our domestic community and our
international one,” Laura Dean, Director of International
Student Engagement at the ICC, said. “A sense of
community is vital to their feeling like this is a place that
they can call their home away from home.”
Dean helps create programs to help international
students engage with the wider university community,
including activities for the upcoming International
Education Week starting Nov. 15. She called the family
that’s formed there in spite of cultural differences and
roadblocks “impressive.”
“It is such an amazing feat that they come to the U.S. to
pursue a higher education degree potentially in a language
that is not their native one and succeed to such a degree
that [rivals] a domestic student who’s been in the U.S. their
whole lives,” Dean said. “There’s a real humility to these
students that come here. They’re so open and happy to be
a part of campus. That open-mindedness that they come
with is so great to see.”
After the culture shock of studying so far away
from home, it’s the ICC and the international student
community at large that many students cite as instrumental
to their experience in Baton Rouge.
“I didn’t know much about Baton Rouge before I came
here,” Saachi Chugh, former president of the International
Student Association, said.
A neuroscience graduate student from Panjab, India,
Chugh describes how she felt like an outsider coming to an
American university. Despite diversity and inclusion being
encouraged on campus and within campus life, Chugh said
she still felt isolated when she didn’t understand the social
touchstones of American culture.
She was specifically confused by American football,
specifically the traditions surrounding it like tailgating.
Once she began interacting with members of the
ICC and ISA, Chugh felt more at home, despite COVID
preventing her from returning to her family in Panjab.
“I was able to find my people through the ICC,” Chugh
said. “It’s easier to find that connection because what we
feel is the same, being away from home. That feeling of
being able to connect with each other and understand what
others are feeling instantly makes you get attached. I was
kind of able to find my own family here through ICC.”
Banal feels more patriotic and in love with her own
culture after studying in America. Despite enjoying the
“freeing individualistic culture” in America, she still longs
for a taste of home, specifically a bowl of Laphing, a spicy
cold mung bean noodle dish native to Nepal.
Even after standing in awe at Tiger Stadium and
researching recipes of his “new favorite foods like gumbo
and jambalaya,” Allen said he misses the little things about
England like the culture of walking that is simply absent in
many American cities, especially Baton Rouge.
“You can compare things constantly but you fall in love
with your own culture even more when you get exposed to
different cultures. It’s a win-win: you get to learn someone
else’s culture and you start to like yours even more than you
did,” Allen said. “You realize, ‘Gosh, I really do miss a nice
rainy English day’.”
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