International students are often confused and lonely

A bewildering array of adjustments confront the average international student:

• New language
• New culture,
• New environment,
• New system of education
• New friends, and maybe new enemies
• New ways to buy, sell, borrow and save.

Not surprisingly, many international students are homesick and lonely, sometimes to the point of despair.  Often to the point where they would appreciate a Christian friend reaching out to them.

The following quotation provides a rare look at the inner turmoil of an international student.  Though a Mainland Chinese visiting scholar at Northwestern University wrote it in 1988, others face the same struggle today. 

"I knew my misery came not only from missing my family, but also from the frustration of being unable to learn (in English).  People in Beijing must be thinking I was enjoying myself here in the richest country in the world.  Yet I was suffering, not because people in America were rejecting me, but because they didn't understand me and didn't seem to care how I felt-and because I didn't understand them, either.  After my three classes each day, I wandered around the campus like a ghost. I had nowhere to go." [1]

Another lonely "ghost" recently appeared on a campus in the Mid-Atlantic.  Here's how this international student described his American experience in an email, 

"I am not doing so well here.  My professor cut my scholarship because he is out of funds.  I will have to make money for my unbelievably expensive tuition...And even worse, I have been feeling so lost these days.  I am thinking that nobody will notice even if I am killed one day.  I have tried so hard to be a good friend, but it seems nobody cares, nobody wants to be a close friend of mine."

There are many ways to assist the international students studying at a university near you.