International students provide insights

In honor of Charlotte Mingo, one of the ten most awesome people ever to grace Earth, being back in Emporia, I must take this opportunity to speak on my favorite topic: international students.

My love for the international students started a few years ago. I spent my junior year of college in Plymouth, England, gallivanting about and creating equal parts havoc and beauty wherever I went. In my own diluted mind I’d like to think I was like Audrey Hepburn in “Sabrina”: a freakishly beautiful, whisper thin lass with a charming, good natured grace. In all actuality, for anyone who is counting, I was more like what’s-her-face from “What a Girl Wants”: brash, a little over the top and perchance for awkward moments and clumsiness.

Coming back to America was hard. I missed life over there. When it came time to start school again, I didn’t have time to come down to look for an apartment so I just signed up for the dorms. A week before I was set to go down, I finally got my assignment from residential life. I was on the international floor and my roommate was a foreign exchange student.

My parents called it karma. My friends balked at the idea. I called it awesome. From the very first day, Charlotte and I discovered our similarities outnumbered our differences. We bonded over a love of loud and obnoxious games. We spent an exorbitant amount of time designing our own games. To this day I maintain that “throw the ball through the pipes”, “focus ball”, “how close can you get to that squirrel before it runs away” and “who can role their ‘R’s the longest” should be Olympic sports. She taught me dirty French phrases and how to climb into the little cubby hole in our closets. I taught her Texas hold ‘em poker and how to most effectively scare someone by jumping out of the closet (the key is to stay in the closet for at least five minutes after the person had entered the room. That way they are pretty settled in the belief that they are alone). I didn’t know there was anyone like Charlotte out there and I am so glad I had to chance to be her domestic buddy.

I hear the international community take a lot of flack around ESU. I don’t want to repeat the things I’ve heard because I genuinely do not care what those people think.

The international students that I was privileged to live with gave me some of the most amazing moments of my college experience. The Office of International Education loves to have the students interacting with domestic students as well. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship and it’s one that isn’t taken up often enough.

Living on that floor gave me the chance to have a little bit more closure on my own experience abroad. I got to see the other side of the fence with Charlotte. For that, I am forever in her debt. I leave you know with a French phrase that I learned from her. I think it embodies our friendship the best. “Ces casse-croûte de fruit sont expirés. Je souhaite que je n'aie pas mangé tellement beaucoup.” I’ll leave it to you to figure out what it says.