My best girlfriend, who is Chinese, is dating an American classmate.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you already know that I am also dating an American, so she has been using me as her own personal relationship coach (which I am more than happy to be!).

I guess other foreign students might have similar situations if they are dating Americans, so I want to share our discussions with you guys.  Also, the advice I would give if she was in China asking about a Chinese guy would be very different, so I’ll highlight the different reactions in China and the U.S. for the same situation.

Have you had any of these problems? Do you agree with my answers?  Let me know in the comments!

Problem 1:

“We had a very romantic and intimate second date, but after that, he did not call or text me for three days! What is going wrong? Will he contact me again? If he won’t call me, should I call him?”

American answer: It depends on how much you like him. If you like him and want to hang out again, just call him and ask him out. Who cares!
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Having lived in the U.S. for two years now, I have been experienced many firsts, but none of them compare to the first I experienced last week – my first Valentine’s Day. Well, the first Valentine’s Day I actually got to celebrate, anyway.

It is hard to believe that my first big day romance-wise happened in a country that I am not from and with a guy who is not Chinese. But I think it just made the whole thing fun, cool and memorable.

My friends were so surprised that at 24 years old I had never had a real Valentine’s Day, but I am pretty sure I am not alone (please LEAVE COMMENTS below if this year was also your first V-Day!).

Last Valentine’s Day, my friend told me not to be sad that I didn’t have anyone to celebrate with – when the time is right, it will exceed all your expectations. And he was right.

So let’s go back to talking about the big V-Day date, and chatting about some points that I think are interesting to share.

Having “the talk”

Before V-Day this year, my boyfriend and I had been dating for a couple of months, and we were right at the point of “defining the relationship.” We had a big, formal talk over dinner one night to discuss where we were in this relationship and where it should be going, and this talk basically determined if we would celebrate Valentine’s Day together.
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When you see your old friends who came to the U.S. earlier than you, one big change you can spot immediately will be a change in their body. My college friend who went to the U.S. two years before me was totally changed into another person the next time I saw her – she had gained so much weight in her time there. Luckily, she was way too skinny before, and now she looks perfect, but not everyone has such a happy result.

My roommate used to weigh 100 lbs back in China; now she is almost 120 lbs, and complaining to me all day.

I had been always around 98 lbs when in China, but my weight went up to 110 lbs last year, which totally freaked me out. Thank goodness I figured out some quick and easy ways to save my body, and I’ve gone back to the “under 100 lbs group” – I will share how I did it later in this post.

It’s a common problem. Answers.com has a heated discussion on the topic of “Why do immigrants to the US gain weight?”  The Daily Mail, a British paper, reported that America is the “worst holiday spot for the waistline, with travellers gaining an average of 8lb in two weeks.”

Am I scaring you yet?

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On the red carpet!

Name: Tara Cheng (天天 is my Chinese name)

Home Country: China

School: University of Southern California

Year: Graduate Student, Class of 2012

Major: Communication

What’s one thing you like better about the US than your home country so far?

People give a better respect on privacy and individuality of others than Chinese do.

What’s one thing you like better about home than the US so far?

Restaurants in Beijing do not close until mid-night.

What one thing from home did you make sure to bring with you to the US?

Chinese accent! Lol I am kidding. My accent is fading day by day. I do not know; I was shocked by how much I was Americanized during the past one year.

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On the red carpet!

What is the coolest experience for an international student studying in the U.S. in your mind? Getting a 4.0 GPA in school? No way. There are many 4.0 students out there, including a silly girl like me. Blogging for Voice of America’s Student Union? Yeah, that is pretty cool, since you are like the voice of your home country on the platform of Voice of America.

But, I had a guaranteed cooler experience last week: partying with Oscar Best Picture Nominees, including actresses Melissa Leo and Amy Adams, director Tom Hooper (of The King’s Speech) and more, in the LA mayor’s mansion!

That was amazing!

I do not really like the word “amazing” in English, because I think Americans use it too much on things that are actually not amazing at all. However, the Nominees’ Night party deserved any word that is for fantastic things.

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Creative commons photo by Flickr user alex.ch

Hey, all! How is your Chinese New Year going?

For an international student, feelings about the Chinese New Year are COMPLICATED. We miss traditions like having a big dinner with family on New Year’s Eve, making dumplings, and watching the New Year Gala on CCTV.

It sounds like all the essential parts of Spring Festival (same as Chinese New Year) are not available in America. So, international students: Was your homesickness getting stronger when the holiday came? Did you feel sad? Did all the bitterness about studying abroad suddenly get you overwhelmed?

Well, my answer is that you do not have to feel sad in the family get-together season with the separation from family. Because either you can try to create a new year atmosphere in the U.S., or just let that day pass naturally – those are your unique experience that only international students have, and you should be proud of it and treasure it!

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Before coming to the U.S., some people told me that Americans are very nice, warm and friendly, while others said that the western culture and philosophy is about egoism, highly individualism which means little emotional bonds among people, in other words, Americans are selfish and cold. Those were what I have been told before.

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user MR38

(Neither is true~~~)

After living here for a while, based my observation and feelings, Americans are indeed nicer in some aspects, such as TALKING. It is way too easy to get complimentary words from my dear American friends. Foreign new comers are sure to be flattered all the time all the time, but as time goes by, they will figure out it and become the ones who output nice words.

So newcomers, please take a conservative attitude when people here say you are amazing, great or something is wonderful, perfect. Most of times, it is just a habit of saying like that, the truth is you are still who you are, your worries are still out there, just enjoy the compliment for a second and then get back to real life.

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After seven months of exploring, enjoying, adapting, torturing…. in the U.S., I finally went back to my home country, China! What was waiting for me there was the incredibly great city of Beijing, yummy Chinese food, old friends who I missed so much, my college, which is my favorite place in the world…and some CULTURE SHOCKS. Yes, I experienced the so-called reverse culture shock in the place where I lived for 20 years.

Renmin University in Beijing, by Flickr user chenyingphoto

Over-friendly

The first culture shock I got after landing in Beijing was about saying hi. In China, people seldom say hi to strangers like the airport clerk, waiters in restaurants or sale associates in shopping malls. That is very different from what it is like in the U.S.

I definitely forgot this tradition after I got out of the plane and said hello to the customs officer in the airport. What made things worse was that I said “hi” rather than “Ni Hao 你好” in Chinese. He stared at me weirdly for a few seconds until I suddenly knew what was going wrong. I just pretended nothing had happened and did not say anything later.

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Creative commons photo by Flickr user tripu

Hey, everyone! How did your midterms go? Easy A or tough B? The language difficulties may make us feel less confident than we were in our home countries in terms of academic performance. But the truth is that all international students in America are extraordinarily smart, and that is why we are here.

The most important attitude that we should always hold is that our ideas and thoughts are not worse than any native speaker although we may not speak and write as fast as they do.  See? Got some confidence?  Here are some most frequently encountered problems for international students studying in the U.S., and I will give you some advice/ tips/ tricks to overcome them!

Oh, I miss out on a lot in class, what should I do?

When English is your second language, it is normal that you may miss some things the professor says in class.  This happens to everyone, but definitely more to second language speakers.

[Read more advice about and experiences with studying in English]

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Before we come to America, we can find out tons of tips on how to get well prepared for living in the U.S. (like the blog of Student Union!). We read them, memorize them and share them, and then we feel highly confident when landing on the U.S. But sometimes, things go unexpectedly wrong. Here are some real, funny, but a little awkward stories of my friends and mine, from when things didn’t go quite as planned.

Dash but a little lower

My friend Zhang is a public relations intern in San Francisco, managing media relations. Once, she was on a phone call with a media agency discussing a series of emails they exchanged.

She was trying to tell them that they had to put an underscore between two words in a website’s URL, but could not think of the right word in English. She stared at the “_” hopelessly, trying deadly hard to find the right word in her mind: “Line?” “Strip?” “That U with a line below it symbol in Microsoft Office 2007?”

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My friend Amy Lee from USC and her sister. They were born in America, and have lived in CA since high school.

It is fairly easy to differentiate Asian students who have recently come to the US from American-born Asians by their skin tone. People may say “no way, they all have beige skin.” But the truth is that girls who have just come from Asia tend to have ivory skin while girls who are born and raised in California have tanned skin.

I have to say, girls in Southern California, no matter what their original skin color is, are crazy about getting tanned.  If you have heard the pop song by Katy Perry called “California Gurls,” she sings about how desirable California girls are with their “sun-kissed skin” and lives lived on the beach in bikinis.

It is indeed a revolution on the ideas that I have held for 23 years about beauty. Should I change my aesthetic taste a little bit and even try sun-kissed skin on myself?

It may not be a bad idea. The shared goal of international students studying in America is to harmonize western and eastern minds inside, so why don’t we try to get changed on the outside as well? If how you feel on the inside really is influenced by how you look on the outside, maybe we can feel better about adapting to the US if we get sun-tanned skin like the California girls.

Besides, let’s look at skin color from a practical perspective.  Even if you want to preserve a light skin tone, keeping fair and light skin in Southern California is not easy.

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