International Flavors

Despite having trouble understanding myself as an international student, I attended the International Student Association's Phony Olympics tonight. We all met at Scholar's Pub supposedly dressed in the garb of our national sport. One Lithuanian woman came dressed in a basketball jersey, which I found odd. But I remember the Lithuanian's put together a damn fine Olympic team last summer Olympics.

Aberystwyth has a much more diverse student body than the window from my dorm would have led me to believe. There were also more American students here than I would have imagined. Both were pluses.

At the beginning of the night, things started rocky. I tend to show up at the time things are scheduled. Odd, I know. When I showed up at 8:00, there were few people in the bar, and few people that looked International. I found two girls, the Lithuanians, sitting upstairs. So I went to the bar, and ordered a Coke.

Now, I don't drink, which is unusual in America, but here it's a downright bizarre sight. The bar tender didn't seem to know what to make of me.
"A coke?"
"Yeah."
Pause.
"...Okay. A pint of a half?"
Not knowing how long we were going to be there, I ordered a half.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye as she filled my glass.
"Thanks."
The half-pint cost me nearly two pounds, so I decided that was the last of that. I took my tiny drink upstairs to where the Lithuanians were speaking some Slavic language and seemed to ignore me. I sat next to them, my Cubs shirt sending out clear signals that I was American, and was looking for other people wearing sports clothing. Two tall blond women joined us at the table, one German, the other Czech. We struck up an uncomfortable conversation - small talk about cultural differences, and how to pronounce words. I was hailed as some sort of knowledge expert when I knew the noun form of 'to apologize' was 'apology.'
"See," their German friend said, "We should hang out with more Americans. They know English."

It is a humbling experience to be with people from other European countries. Almost all of them spoke several different languages, and would, at times, code switch between the two of them.
"I am not drinking, no," the Czech woman said, "I took medikament today."

About twenty minutes or so into the night Brad, an American exchange student, came over to the table, and a Malaysian law student, joined our group. Brad and I shared a love of the more independent or alternative comics, so we talked about Chris Ware, Jason and some of other favorites.

Meeting Americans abroad is always an experience that seems to ground my identity. Right away, people can peg where I am from by my accent. This one undergraduate girl I met was from Billings, Montana, and had visited Chicago once.
"Oh...you're from Chicago?"
"Yeah."
"Like actually in Chicago."
"Sure, I lived in the city for a while."
"I visited there once, I loved it."
"Where did you go in Chicago."
She starts laughing at this: "Chi-CAW-go! HA HA HA HA!"
I reminded here that there were almost as many people in Aberystwyth as all of Montana.

The night turned into a pub crawl at that point. There was a race to the next pub to see who captains would be. After that, there was tug of war (which Team America won; U.S.A! U.S.A!) outside a bar that was having a military themed party. These sort of games were cute, and the younger students seemed to have a good time with them, but these sort of things are a little behind me. I was not alone, and many of the post-graduate exchange students stood around making smarmy remarks. Which I was good at, and wish they would make an Olympic sport.

The International Student Association was a nice experience, all in all. I talked with some people my age who are not in the English department for the first time since I got here. The majority of the people there were undergraduate students on exchange, there for six months. This added a slightly bittersweet quality to the night as I realized I will, more than likely, never see any of these people again past May. Bitter: because I genuinely liked some of these people; sweet: because I am more of a resident, they are more of a tourist.