Ciara is an Irish-American friend of mine who was born in Indiana, moved to the Netherlands at the age of five, and finally moved to Singapore at 14. When asked where she’s from she initially told people that she moved from Singapore although she does not say that she’s from there. She also doesn’t believe she’s from Indiana because although she was born there and visits a lot she didn’t grow up there. She’s not necessarily from Ireland even though that’s where her mother is from and finally she’s not from Holland because she lived there for a while but she’s not Dutch and she doesn’t speak Dutch. She is now a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW), which is a state school that has less cultural diversity than Ciara is used to. Ciara knew this coming in and expected people in the U.S., more specifically at her school, to have not travelled as much, however, she also expected a more friendly and open culture. She knew that a lot of people she was going to meet were the type of people that were born and raised in the same place their whole lives. When she actually got to her school people were less culturally knowledgeable than she thought, things that she believed to be common knowledge were knew information to her peers. This lack of cultural diversity led her to identify more with international students because she believes that to “really feel like a part of a culture you have to be in it, you have to experience it.” She doesn’t feel like visiting the US for a couple weeks every summer cuts it, it “doesn’t count.”
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Photo Credit: Stanczak, Lael. 2016
Ciara thinks that the fact that she attends a Southern school really affects the fact that she identifies as an international student. On the topic she said, “The difference is the culture, it’s all people in that same culture, whereas internationally, even though I moved from two completely different cultures, in school people where international, it wasn’t only Dutch or only Singapore it was mixed. Here it’s all American. It’s unfamiliar, you’re the only one where you’re unfamiliar and no one understands it besides international students.” Even though it’s been an adjustment Ciara loves it at her school and believes that it’s a good thing to experience change, especially coming from an international school where there’s a lot of cultural diversity but not a lot of economic diversity. “It’s very easy to be in an international bubble but I’m glad that I came to a school that wasn’t super international because it’s something different that you can learn a lot from.”
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