I remember one day, I was sitting in my research lab reading/working/pretending to work (:P), when a hailstorm started. Three of us in the lab, one of us Iranian, one Chinese and me (an Indian), stood by the window, watching it. Surprisingly, none of us remembered the word ‘hail’ in English and the only way we had to describe it was in our native languages. That day, I learned that hail is ‘bīnɡ báo’ in Mandarin and ‘tagarg’ in Persian, and they learned that it is ‘ole’ in Hindi.
Interestingly, UIUC offers not just the exposure to US culture, but also to the cultures of so many towns and cities where all the other international students come from. I do not want to put out any statistics here, but the sum total of them would be large. It is more predominant in the intake of graduate students, but it is also common in the undergraduate batches. I have realized that rather than my newly made American friends, the other international students, even if not from my own nationality, were able to empathize with me in situations more often because we were all in the same boat. For example, the time zone difference that I have to keep in mind before I call up my parents (lest I wake them up in their sleep), cravings for home food that none of the restaurants can fulfill… and I can keep going on.
Discussions that start from something trivial end up being about the politics and geography of our respective countries, foreign policy and visa issues, festivities and even marriage ceremonies. So many times, we have ended up drawing the world map on the small dirty white board in our office and have ogled at the Google maps focused on a continent on one of our PCs. Your general knowledge just shoots up, without any effort. Nor is there any dearth of what to talk about, and there is something new to talk about every day. I am curious about the culture in their countries and they are curious about the culture in mine. I remember, I took my other international friends to an Indian Festival celebration on the Quad last November, and when I told them the story of why we celebrate this, all the skits and talks from middle school made perfect sense, although I remember loathing them because of their repetitive nature at that time!
It happened naturally for me because my research lab and my classmates are from all these different countries, but if someone is interested, I know that there are many events around campus throughout the year that actively engage in such kind of interaction. Keep looking out for emails from ISSS, the Illini Union website and maybe just flyers on boards or the chalk scribblings on the walk in the Quad, you may find something you want to go to.