REXBURG – When Chance stepped off the Trailways Express bus at midnight in Rexburg, he knew he did not want to be there. The 28 degree winter night bit into his face as he pulled his luggage out of the bus’ storage underbelly. The snow, frozen into a slick ice, gleamed in the orange streetlamp light. Chance carefully avoided stepping on the snow as he pulled his luggage along the empty sidewalk. His only companions the snow and the ever present freezing breeze.

Chance Lee, a 24 year old interior design major from Taichung, Taiwan, knew that he was here for an education but that fact did not make it any easier. For Chance, coming back to Brigham Young University of Idaho after Christmas break was one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

From the outside the apartment looked dark, a telltale sign that his roommates were either asleep or hadn’t returned from their own vacations. His key clicked the door opened, and only the green glow of the microwave clock welcomed him back.

“I felt so alone that night. I really missed Taiwan,” he says. Many students arrive every year at BYU-I l in Rexburg, Idaho and experience homesickness in some form. A recent study by the Pennsylvania State University defined homesickness as a byproduct of culture shock, which can induce feelings of anxiety, depression, and alienation. Almost all college students go through some form of homesickness in their college life.

“I was fine during the day, but at night when I wasn’t busy was when I would start missing home. It’s especially hard when you first come back to school because you can compare still.”

It was in these lonely moments where Lee says that he needed to talk to somebody about Taiwan or be overwhelmed by emotion. He would pick up the phone and call Tori Lin, another student from Taiwan, and they would reminisce about the country they left behind. They would talk about the food, the hot pot cuisine that would make you sweat in Taiwan’s humidity. They would talk about the street vendors hawking rosemary popcorn chicken at the night markets.

“The food here is so plain. I really stress about the food here. It’s all the same and it’s so expensive,” Lee complains. “We have so many different types of food in Taiwan, and it’s so cheap. I can’t get used to American food.”

They would talk about the Chinese New Year celebrations and the noisy explosions of easily purchased firecrackers in the street popped by store owners hoped for a prosperous new year. They would talk about their families, but at the core of it all, they would talk about their homeland in all its goodness and how they were away from it all.

In the three years that Lee has been in America, he has only been home once.

HOME AWAY FROM HOMEBy Ivor Lee

Chance is only one of a thousand international students from 60 different countries attending BYU-I. What begins as a journey of excitement to be in a new country, often encounters disappointments as their expectations of America aren’t met. For many of these students, culture shock is a part of the BYU-I experience. On average non-White students entering the university environment experience deep feelings of alienation because of their entrance into a culture where White middle-class values are the norm.

“In some schools,” says Dr. Senel Porazli of the Pennsylvania State University, “where there is racial discrimination of any kind, the students have a harder time adjusting to culture shock.”

In fact, a related study by Dr. Klineburg and Dr. Hull concluded that loneliness in homesickness is also directly related to discrimination. Students that perceived they were being discriminated against often felt even lonelier than before. Often international students that had spent a longer time in America would perceive higher levels of discrimination than students that had spent a short time in the country.

The study also concluded that the student’s country of origin played a factor. European students seemed to feel less discriminated against, whereas Asian students felt more discriminated.

Dr. Porazli says that international students as a whole report higher levels of homesickness than their American counterparts. “Because of cultural and language differences,” he says, “international students may have a harder time adjusting to new surroundings, causing them to think about and miss their friends and families in their home countries. International students may also perceive more discrimination because they may speak English with an accent, and because they belong to a visible racial or ethnic group.”

BYU-I is well known for its friendly and happy student population, but the culture of the school often presents a difficult obstacle for international students to overcome—especially rural American culture. As a result, sometimes it’s hard for students to break through the culture shock and fit into the culture of North America.

Often International students will group together and form social groups with students of the same race to cope because they feel that the culture and the language are a barrier that cannot be overcome. Lee was lucky though. He was fluent in an unlikely universal language: Breakdancing.

When Lee first arrived at BYU-I he attended a student dance on campus and met other “B-boys” head-gliding and spinning on the dance floor. Recognizing the familiar language of stylish poses or “freezes,” Lee introduced himself by showing his own proficiency at breakdancing by throwing down a few moves of his own. After a set of stylized Above: Chance and Tyson Stevens

Below: The “Rexburg Wrecking Kru”

footwork and a stunning one-handed spinning hand stand—a 1990—the b-boys of BYU-I’s unofficial breakdance crew, the “Rexburg Wreking Kru”, were impressed. In the space of half a song and a few dozen different “freezes” new friends were quickly made.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, if you want to dance, you can dance with us,” says Tyson Stevens, one of the b-boys, “Chance is amazing on the floor.” But not all students are as fortunate to easily make friends through dance. International students often have trouble adjusting to their new environment, mainly because they don’t understand the social norms and the language that is spoken. Students with lower levels of English often have higher levels of homesickness. Even for students like Lee who speak fluent English, there are times where they don’t understand.

On one occasion Lee participatied in a b-boy “battle” held in the Rexburg Legacy Air Museum against rival sister-school BYU Provo. When the emcee announced the BYU “Groundhouds” aliases, Lee, sitting cross-legged on the smooth cement floor, had to turn to one of his crew mates and ask what “aka” meant.

“Americans use a lot of slang,” says Lee, “and they also speak so quickly. When someone tells me a joke I usually don’t get it.”

Many universities have International student associations that regularly put on activities to encourage friendships between international and American students in order to help break down the cultural and language barriers. This is all to aid in an effort to help reduce perceived discrimination. Experts have found that because perceived discrimination is directly related to the severity of homesickness, addressing that issue helps international students adapt easier to their new environment.

Yet, for most students like Lee, homesickness is something that people just adapt to.

“You just have to find a way to do it, and then do it. Somehow it will always work out,” says Lee.

To Lee, letting it work out means occasionally making the 5 hour long drive to Salt Lake City to find a decent Chinese grocery store that carries essential food supplies. “It’s all about the food,” he says.

Right: The Kind of Taiwanese Cuisine Chance loves