By Erik van Denburg
An American girl thought he was a sexual predator, but Gabriel Leon, an international student majoring in Economics, was merely being Argentinean.
“Where I’m from it’s normal to kiss when you meet, so when I was introduced to this girl at a party, I tried to kiss her. She put her hands up, pulled away and went ‘whoa!’ She thought what I was doing was way out of line,” Leon said.
Merlijn Hovius is a film major who is a Dutch exchange student. Hovius lives with Gabriel on the fifth floor of Alliance Hall, where most foreign students spend their first year. Hovius can relate to Gabriel’s problem.
“Our people are even ‘warmer’ than the Argentineans,” Merlijn said. “When we kiss as a greeting, we kiss three times.”
The Dutch don’t kiss strangers as often as the Argentinians. Usually, Hovius’ physical salutations are accepted by the recipient. However, the third kiss usually fails to reach its intended target: the cheek.
“Sometimes people figure the third one is aimed at a more sensitive part of the face,” Hovius said. “This can lead to misinterpretation.”
The kissing problem is merely one example of the cultural divide; foreign students must overcome to function smoothly in American society. Foreign students can be irked by what would seem to be insignificant cultural capriciousness. Americans either dine later or earlier. They call football soccer. They don’t necessarily expect an answer to “How are you doing?” And, while they have invented at least a couple of dozen variations on the latte, they seem utterly incapable of making a decent espresso.
But while trivial things like customs of greeting and culinary peculiarities are easily adapted to, some American cultural attributes are less easy to acquire. Many foreign students find general American social form hard getting used to.
“Americans are more phony than where I’m from,” Imme van Dijk, also Dutch and an undeclared major, said. “I was once working on this group project in class, and two girls couldn’t stand this guy because he didn’t do his work. They talked all sorts of stuff behind his back, but when they met face-to-face they were all smiles.”
Most foreign students find this the most imposing social hurdle they face.
“Where I’m from, if you think someone is a bastard, you say: ‘Hey bastard.’ Here you say ‘hi!’ and flash a big fake smile at them,” van Dijk said.
Van Dijk argues that this American cultural trait is rooted in a more superficial attitude toward other people, and manifests itself often in her daily life.
“In my hockey team, people say ‘love you’ when they hang up on the phone,” van Dijk said. “It means the same thing as ‘bye bye.’ I would never say I loved someone if I didn’t.”
Less charged terms of affection are used with even more abandon. “If you talk to someone for five seconds they call you a ‘friend’,” van Dijk said.
Foreign students might seem unreceptive of the American way of socializing, for most this is not the case.
“I think it’s not a good or a bad thing that Americans act that way. I mean, it has its advantages. You could also say they are very polite in comparison to us,” Hovius said trying to adjust to American custom.
Van Dijk, however, thinks American culture could benefit from a bit of Dutch input sometimes. When she was having trouble with her study-group, she confronted its disliked member with his own behavior.
“I told him what the others thought of him, and why,” van Dijk said.
This intervention was a success. “After that, he changed his act. I don’t think an American would have done it that way,” van Dijk said.
Still, a picture of general negativity seems to emerge toward the American way of doing things. And indeed, many foreign students joke about hating Americans.
“Don’t ask me such difficult questions.” a Canadian student, who wished to remain anonymous, responded when asked what he liked about Americans. An inhabitant of the Alliance Hall’s fifth floor called his dorm floor “Hofstra’s Ellis Island.”
“They rid us of lice, tropical disease, and un-American thoughts here. Only after a year’s incubation dare they let us roam free in American society,” he said.
When pressed however, several all foreign students deny hating Americans, or even disliking them.
“If that were so, what would I be doing in America,” Leon said.
And even though sometimes a little thought is required, most do find that the locals do have something to offer personality-wise.
“They have an enthusiasm that I have never seen in Europe,” Alex Huve, a junior film major from France, said. “Back home, if I’m working on a project of some kind, like music, or film it will be greeted with a lot of cynicism. Over here, people are a lot more positive.”
Huve thinks Americans have the ability to think big.
“This is something you don’t find in Europe as much,” Huve said.