Foreign confusion

Take a step back and look at America.

Sure, driving on the right side of the road, infomercials, reality TV and football all seem normal, to Americans at least.

But what does America look like when seen through the eyes of a foreign student?

"I had to come to terms with the football," said Prasanna Ravishankar, a recent Auburn graduate originally from India. "I didn't know what football was. That's not a sport that we follow in India."

Ravishankar is a member of the newly formed Auburn Cricket club.

He came to Auburn in 2005 to study electrical engineering.

"I had to put up an accent so that people could understand me better," Ravishankar said. "This is the result of four years of training."

A difference he has noticed in his time in America is different gender expectations.

"People, and especially girls, don't come out at night," Ravishankar said. "It's frowned upon back home. Stuff like that is different here. In my country they are very strict about stuff like that."

And then there is the food.

"I'm a vegetarian for the last few years, and I've never had difficulty getting vegetarian food back home," Ravishankar said. "Here, it's a little bit different. The menu just has one or two vegetarian choices."

Nikhil Jha, senior in electrical engineering, who moved to Auburn three months ago from Australia, said diversity, or the lack thereof, has been interesting.

"Everything is a lot more uniform down South," Jha said. "Everyone seems similar. And, in the sense, that not only are they similar in upbringings, but have the exact same values. There's no real diversity in terms of thoughts."

Jha identified another diverse aspect of American life: slang and colloquial language.

"I start talking to a professor and then five minutes later he says 'I lost you halfway,'" Jha said. "They just don't really know what

it means at all, like just the slang, saying things like bogans. No one gets it."

Jha said bogans is kind of what'd you call a Southern hick.

Another point of interest for Jha, as well as most college students the world over, is the drinking age.

In Australia, the drinking age is 18, which might contribute to their more casual approach to drinking, especially in college.

"People here, when they drink, they do it to get completely toasted," Jha said. "They get their tonsils fried."

Other differences noticed by foreign Auburn students were in the classroom.

Dongjo Chai, senior in aerospace engineering, who came to America in 9th grade, said the school system he attended in America was much easier when compared to South Korea.

"In Korea, for high school students, some times you go home at 11 p.m.," Chai said. "All we do is study, study by ourselves. We went 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., which is pretty much the same. Four to 11 is our study time. We cannot go home because teachers control studies."

America offered Chai more free time, which he used to learn violin and play golf.

"If I were in Korea, I wouldn't have a chance to learn those kind of things," Chai said. "And most people don't have a chance. If they want to do sports, they cannot study. They can only do sports."

Chai identified an aspect of America he doesn't like--commercials.

"In Korea, TV shows don't have (excess commercials)," Chai said. "If they're showing a movie, they show the full two hours."

Joo Oh, junior in predental, also moved to America from South Korea in the 9th grade.

"The one weird thing for me was in Korea we don't call older people by their name," Oh said. "If they're a teacher, and they're older, we just call them teacher, not their name."

Oh has learned much about American culture, but one thing still is past her comprehension.

"I can still not understand stand-up comedians."