Quietly inhabited igloos still dot the icy landscape of northern Canada. In Australia, the minimum wage for everyone 18 and older is $12 an hour, nearly double California’s rate. Kenya’s climate is similar to California’s with the exception of snow.

De Anza College’s classrooms are filled with students with such cultural anecdotes, as more than 2,200 students attend De Anza on some type of visa.

Nadav Laor had his bags packed and was planning to attend De Anza for only two days to fill the short gap before he and his family were scheduled to fly back to Israel. At the time he was a Monta Vista high school senior.

Despite the hardship of being alone, he told his family "You guys go back, I’m staying here." If he had returned to Israel, he would not have graduated from high school and would have had to start over with Hebrew Bible classes and "crazy math." Through friends, he found an Israeli family to live with, opened a bank account, and got a car.

This July he will go back to Israel and join the Israeli army.

The interruption in his education doesn’t disturb him. He said that in the United States there is a living pattern of "High school, college, marriage. In Israel, it’s the same pattern just with ‘army’ in the middle."

In Israel he says he interacts with Jews "24/7" but at De Anza, he’s made friends who are both Christian and Muslim. He also has friends from Iran, which would be unheard of in Israel. His parents love the fact that he can do that.

Jennifer Ablan said that everybody knows her because she is so nice and smiles at everyone. Sometimes when she goes to the movies she is stopped and recognized as "the cafeteria girl." Although she graduated with a Venezuelan degree in human resources, she was unable to find employment there. Now Ablan uses her smile on the students who slide trays of pizza and sandwiches past her at De Anza’s cafeteria register.

Ablan sais she is drawn to other international students. She says that in the United States, "Dating is like fast food." Things are fast and easy, and they don’t care about feeling. "You have sex and tomorrow you don’t know each other." She said. Ablan lives with her aunt and expects her time at De Anza to pay off economically, not just romantically—unlike in Venezuela, where a person can save for five years and still afford a car.

Curtis Chalmeres, from Alberta, Canada, observed that the student population of De Anza College is nearly twice the population of his hometown of 16,000. In fact, the population of California exceeds the entire country of Canada. He is used to a "rush hour" that is "10 minutes, behind four cars."

He said "People move slower in the cold. Canada is extremely laid back."

He said that "Hockey was life" and that he misses it. Some Canadian children would learn to skate before they learned to walk and would try their blades out over the readily available rink of a frozen lake. Chalmeres has decided to make a living here earning the "almighty American dollar" which is worth nearly 20 percent more than a Canadian dollar. Despite the occasional igloo, Canada is not that different. "Don’t be ready for culture shock." He said. "People are relatively the same."

Mario Bol is one of 21,000 "Lost Boys" who fled from war-torn villages of Sudan. The United Nations collected the children at the border of Sudan and Ethiopia, and they were placed in Kenyan refugee camps. During Bol’s years in Kenya, he learned English in order to get a job. He also speaks Dinka, his tribal language, as well as Swahili and Arabic.

Bol is one of 4,000 men chosen by lottery to emigrate to the United States. Those in the camp would check a listing of names on a board every day in hopes to see that their own name would not be eliminated from those who had a chance to leave.

Of the thousands of Sudanese refugees living in the United States, there are only 113 women, and some of them have American boyfriends. He joked about the high competition.

Padmaleka Wanniarachi would not have had the chance to pursue a child development major–or to get a college degree at all–if she had stayed in Sri Lanka, a tear-drop shaped island at the tip of southern India. In Sri Lanka, "[Formal] child care is not important," she explained. Older children or grandparents look after children instead of day care centers. University-level work is free, but only for students who get high enough scores in prerequisite schooling.

Wanniarachi said that since coming to the United States she’s gained weight from the food, and that she doesn’t feel the health benefits of a heavy sweat. In Sri Lanka people sweat "like a heavy rain," she said. While she misses her family in Sri Lanka, she hopes to one day move to Australia and live with her sister there.

Anna Socha, president of De Anza’s European club, came from Poland in hopes of eventually transferring to UC Berkeley. She noticed that academics are more intense here. For final exams in Poland, a student is expected to wear a white shirt and dark pants. Socha likes De Anza’s informality and changed her style, sometimes coming to school in a gray sweatshirt and jeans. Some of the other adjustments have been more tedious. Her driver’s license took nine months to process, since she has no social security number. When she leaves De Anza behind, she would like to travel in Asia and South America and is not planning to return to Poland anytime soon.

Socha advises international students that they should not see a new environment as better or worse than their own country, just different. "Students should not criticize things they can not change [but should] exercise their own way how to deal with the differencess," she said.

If Dino Harambasic had stayed in Sweden, he could have gone to school for free. Universities are paid for by taxes, and students earning doctorate degrees can in fact be paid for their labor over textbooks. Yet he said "You can’t put a price tag on the experience." He doesn’t regret a dime of the money he’s spent to study in United States; he said learning in a different country is a "beautiful thing."

Sometimes international students face more complicated struggles than not being allowed to work off-campus on a F-1 student visa or having to pay $111 per unit. It is difficult to develop friendships and romantic relationships.

Nicole Endler chose to travel from Australia to California to live with her father and to try out a country that was different but "not exotic." She said "Australia and America are very different. People don’t understand me." She said it is "kind of freaky" when people would try to get to know her because of her accent. Or on the other side, "they think I’m stupid because of my accent and think that I don’t understand anything." She said. Endler says she wants to keep her "Aussie" accent because it grounds her.

She said she can’t have a romantic relationship because no one here is on the same wavelength. "Guys want to be with you just because you’re different." She also said that everyone is a "girly-girl" here. "You can’t be a tomboy and be straight," she said. She is not used to it when men pay for dates and it makes her feel awkward. "In Australia, guys and girls can just be good friends. There is not this sexual tension." She advises international students to find support in people from other countries, not particularly Americans because "They don’t see what you’ve given up." To those from the United States she said "Get to know us for us, not because of our nationality."

Kevin Hu has lived a back-and-forth life. His English is perfect until he has a "bad gramma
r day," an occasion when his accent slips out. Born in Taiwan, he spent the first seven years of his childhood in Seattle, Washington, where he adopted American culture since he was little. He went back to Taiwan and later returned to Seattle eight years later for high school. Now, when people ask him where he’s from he just says "Seattle," because he "connects with it better than anywhere else."

When people used to ask him his country of origin he would tell them he was from Germany or Iceland and found the most of his friends were European. He had difficulty making friends with people from Taiwan and worried that he would say something "too American." In high school he thought about marrying a Polish friend so he could work in the European Union. He is still attracted to European culture and is learning French and Polish, but he said that you can’t disregard who you are. "You can’t say that you’re white when you’re really Asian." He said.

He faced and identity crisis until he took an Intercultural Communication course last quarter at De Anza. He learned to identify the multiple identities that make up a person and sorted out the problems of being a minority within a minority. Hu has a younger sister who was born in the United States and holds an American citizenship. He counsels her to "Know who you are; don’t be lost."

Duane Kubo, Dean of the Intercultural/International studies division, said that college is the place where students can come in contact with many languages and cultures. It’s an experience they can’t have again for the rest of their lives, not even in the workplace, so they should take advantage of it.