24A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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NEWS
MONDAY, AUGUST 15.2005
FEATURE
New campus,new home
Students use orientation to adapt to KU, Lawrence
BY FRANK TANKARD
ftankard@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Students fresh off 24-plus hours of travel hung their heads like immigrants at Ellis Island, waiting wearily in line for their name tags and room keys. They got on the elevator a few at a time, unlocked the doors to their temporary rooms in Naismith Hall
and passed out in unmade beds.
It was Aug. 7, and for many new international students, it was their first day in the United States. Most came alone. Some met up with long lost friends from home. Others smiled, hiding their jet lag.
and made new friends from all walks of life.
They didn't know much about their new school and didn't fully understand the culture that suddenly enveloped them. Not yet, anyway. But over the next week, the 200-plus students who attended International Student Orientation Week would begin to feel comfortable.
Taylor Miller/KANSAN
After hanging her orientation name tag around her neck, Noriko Shibata, Tokyo senior, took the elevator to the sixth floor. Clothes and a computer filled most of her big metal suitcase, but she left some space for small things: pictures and candy from Tokyo. Pictures so she could remember her home, and candy so she could give a taste of it to her new roommates.
Looking around the bare room where she would spend the next week before moving to Jayhawkter Towers, the exchange student giggled anxiously and wondered what she'd do for the rest of the afternoon.
On the blacktop behind the residence hall, orientation leaders gathered to shuttle students around to pick up supplies.
to the library to check my e-mail," she said pensively.
"Maybe I'll take a rest and go
"Do you need to go to Wal-Mart or target?" Piero Euger, Bogota, Colombia, senior, asked an Indian and an Englishman.
Franziska Jung, graduate student from Biesa, Germany, fills her plate at the "Food and Fun at Naismith Hall" pool party Wednesday held for all international students as part of their orientation. Among the countries represented were France, Bulgaria, Germany, Japan, China, South Korea, India, and Romania.
The Englishman, a blond-haired sophomore from Stratford-upon-Avon named Christopher Sandall, chose Wal-Mart, 3300 Iowa St., because he'd heard of it, and they climbed into the van. In the mega-store, the Indian, a freshman from Raipur named Atul Koshley, mentioned buying beer. He's 20 years old. Tough luck.
The next day, Pedro Dos Santos wasn't nervous. Dos Santos, a 6-foot-9 Rio De Janeiro native, crammed himself into a chair in the back of Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union and waited for his first look at Chancellor Robert Meneway.
sity in Baldwin City the last four years.
Dos Santos, a graduate student, had been at Baker University.
"I came up here a lot." he said.
I came up here a lot, he said.
Five rows down, Lisa Lai, a graduate student from Hubei, China, sat eagerly, waiting for the chancellor and comparing her surroundings to the pictures she'd seen on the Internet.
"It's much more beautiful," she said.
Hemenway soon reached the podium, and the chatter stopped.
"The things that we learn when we study in another country are things that inevitably make for a better world." Hemenway said.
All week, as the students filled out legal paperwork, got physicals and did other tedious tasks, they continued to absorb everything around them. Most importantly, they talked to each other A lot. Even this was a cultural exercise.
"The people-to-people relation was the weirdest thing for me," said Luis Parreira, insurance coordinator for International Student and Scholar
SEE ORIENTATION ON PAGE 23A
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Each year, the University gains approximately 400 new international students. More than 200 of them participated in last week's New International Student Orientation Week. They came from 47 countries, ranging from Nicaragua to Macau. Here are the countries that had the most new international students in attendance:
The 1,616 international students at the University of Kansas last semester made up about 6 percent of the total student population.
China: 20
Germany: 14
Hong Kong: 6
India: 29
Japan: 22
Paraguay: 5
South Korea: 24
Taiwan: 15
United Kingdom: 10
Source: International Student and Scholar Services
Nature's wrath stalls student
BY FRANK TANKARD
flankard@kansan.com
KANKSAN WRITE WRITER
He was going to the United States for the first time. Trying to, anyway.
Srinivasan was leaving his hometown of Chennai in southeast India for a place called the University of Kansas to take graduate classes in aerospace
When Shyam Srinivasan booked a flight out of India for July 27, he couldn't have known that a drowning city 600 miles away would alter his plans.
engineering.
But it would be a while before he'd arrive.
Fortunately, none of Srinivasan's friends or family members were caught in the floods.
Srinivasan's first scheduled stop was Mumbai, formerly Bombay, on the west coast of India. But the day before he was scheduled to leave, a reported 30 inches of rain in 24 hours devastated the city. When he went to the Chennai airport early the next morning, flights had been cancelled and delayed throughout the country.
As more than 1,000 people drowned on the streets of the city of more than 12 million people. Srinivasan had more mundane things to think about. Like
Srinivasan
when he would get to Kansas and what he would eat until he arrived.
For two days he was in the Chennai airport, waiting to leave. He couldn't venture outside because he'd already
He checked his bags, went through customs and learned that his flight had been cancelled. He'd have to wait for the next flight to Mumbai, although nobody knew when that would be.
gone through customs. After living off mostly juice boxes, sleeping little and meeting other college students bound for the United States, Srinivasan finally caught a plane to Mumbai.
There he found an airport in disrepair.
"There were no phone booths, nothing," he said. "No communication, no proper food."
He was in Mumbai for the next day and a half, he said, waiting for a flight out of the airport as officials counted bodies outside. When he got on the plane, he had to wait three more hours on the runway for clearance.
"We were not sure of what was going to happen," he said.
SEE WRATH ON PAGE 23A