This kid is from China

This is Yuheng, Zhou (Jojo), the international student from China at the Rutgers University. As an international student from a country which is significantly different compare to here, I did experience copious challenges in the United States.  There are so many kids ask me if I prefer China or the U.S. I would say of course America, because in U.S., I can accomplish the achievement that I can never succeed in China—being exotic. Seriously, on some classes, I am even the only Asian at the class, and that makes me extremely impossible to skip the class

         Before I come to Rutgers, I spent one year at Tufts for an English language program. Until now, I still remember how I got memorized by my first squad here. At the welcoming ceremony, I put on my China flag , and introduced myself to other kids. “Hey, this Yuheng, and it is pretty obvious to tell where I am coming from right?”. As everybody heard that, they started to laugh. From then, everybody knows that the program has a kid from China who is super patriotic. Sometimes, they called me the kid from China. I was fine with that, until another Chinese kid came to the program later. From then, I am not longer the only kid from China so you have to remember my name. Eventually, as we spent more and more time with others, we have to know people which caused a great trouble.

     

  I am horrible at remembering people’s name especially with the middle east names and  common Americans.For the middle eastern names, everything sounds similar and more importantly, occasionally, people like to share the same name. For example, Muhammad is a really common name for the mid-east people, and personally, I have more than 7 friends named Muhammad. It is pretty easy for me to mess up with their name. Sometimes, I was trying to looking for a specific Muhammad, but it turned out thatseveral buddies showed up after heard I called their name; and sometimes, I wave at someone named Abdullah but he responded like sorry I am Abdulaiz. On the other hand, for the more common American names, I just cannot match their names and faces together. Occasionally, I still remember sometimes I waved to my friend and shouted their names, but the name came out of my mouth was a random name like Mike. My friends always got confused like who is Mike? When it happened,  it was really awkward.

    At the same time, my name sounded so strange to my non- Chinese friends, and it also took forever for them to remember my name as well. Since the language between the Chinese and English does have great differences, there are some pronunciations which cannot be conveyed in two different languages. Therefore, it is relatively hard for lots of non- Chinese speakers to pronounce my name correctly. Here is the story of  where my English name is coming from. My last is Zhou, and all my American friends pronounce that like “Jo”, and they keep saying “JO JO JO JO JO JO JO and then Jojo”. Eventually , My American name becomes Jojo. Personally, I really like my name because it sounds really funny and easy to remember, and sometimes my name itself is a great ice-breaker for me to start a conversation with others. “Hello, nice to meet you, my name is Jojo” “That is an interesting name.”More importantly, the name “Jojo” saves me lots of time to take a order at Starbucks.

  That’s me Yuheng, Zhou and Jojo as my American nick name. The first challenge for me to come here is how do I introduce myself, how to remember so many different names. Until now, I am still working on it.

 

Mission Statement

This blog is created as a personal blog, basically sharing my interesting experiences at Rutgers or any other institution might be mentioned in the United States as an international student. The reason I want to do that is because as an internaional student from another side of the world, I do find some culture shocks when I come here for the first time. Sometimes, I experienced some problems but while other times, I had lots of fun with the culture differences as well. As a domestic student, who spends the most of timehere in the U.S., you might be curious about what do international students think about the life here. What does thing things you guys take as granted actually can shock some international students? Although, I am not able to represent for every international students, but we do have many experiences in common. In this case, I wantto share my experiences to others especially to the domestic students, help them have a more international angle of American education system and even the society in general. The another goal that I am trying to obtain is trying to build a bridge between the international students and domestic students here. From my observation, it is pretty common for international students to only stay with the other international kids from the same country while domestic kids also have their own friend-zone already. The two groups do not really interact with others probably has something to do with the language barrier or othersenses of the comfort zone. What I want to do is trying to provide a place for domestic students to get ideas of the international students, like actually many of us want to have fun with you guys but the main reason most of us choose not to do that is some people are afraid to get out of our comfort zones. We can also talk about something really interesting happened on us here in the United States  More importantly, we want to be your friend. The blog is going to talk about some challenges that I had experienced as a Chinese international student here. Each week, I am going to post a different challenge. The challenge could be anything from the food, home sick, culture and so on. The challenges would be conveyed in a bunch of stories, and I will share my thoughts, and you are definitely welcomed to make your comment wherever interest you, and what you want to say.