The study abroad students at Sacramento State have reached a critical point in their stay. For most of them, this month marks their halfway point in the United States. It has some of them evaluating their experiences thus far.

Monica Freeman, coordinator of International Programs in the Office of Global Education, wrote in an e-mail that around 30 students are currently at Sac State on exchange from partner universities in other countries.

Students come from Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, Freeman said. Sac State has about 15 international research scholars this semester, Freeman said.

“There was a slight drop in incoming exchange students right after 9/11, but the number has gone back to where it was previous to that event,” Freeman wrote.

Camille Stochitch, 21, from Paris, visited the United States twice before deciding to study a year in Sacramento. She took a year away from her prestigious school in Paris, Sorbonne, to study English in the United States. She is fluent in French, German and English and is needlessly modest about her impeccable English.

Looking back at her first six months in the United States, she is able to laugh about certain initial reactions she had to Sacramento.

“I thought every American girl was so blonde,” Stochitch said.

Starting her second semester at Sac State, she is able to reflect clearly on her feelings about the school as a whole. She mentions that she’s taken a liking to the more relaxed atmosphere in the United States and Sac State.

“In Paris everyone is so stressed and everyone is running,” Stochitch said. “As a whole, I like my teachers at Sac State better.”

She was quick to say she misses France and her boyfriend back in Paris. Over winter break she returned to Paris to visit her friends and family. Although somewhat tempted to not return for her second semester, she knew she could not bail on her lease in Sacramento. She’d also made friends in Sacramento that she would have missed.

One of those friends was Julie Desjardins Rivard from Montreal, Canada. Rivard, 24, finished her master’s degree in urban studies at a university in Quebec and is now studying American studies at Sac State.

Her English is also flawless, probably because she started learning at age nine.

“Canada is a bilingual country so I had to learn,” Rivard said. This works in her favor considering she wants to work with an international institution, like the World Bank, in the future.

Six months into her stay in Sacramento, Rivard said she’s not quite ready to go home and has a lot to accomplish before she returns to Canada.

“I want to go skydiving and visit Las Vegas, San Diego, and Death Valley,” Rivard said. Her mom is planning to visit during the semester and together they hope to visit Napa Valley and the Grand Canyon.

Rivard spoke highly of the United States and her experience here but recalled incidents where she was met with less than knowledgeable students about her home country.

“Sometimes when I say I’m from Quebec people respond, ‘Oh you speak Spanish’ or ‘I love Europe,'” she said as she rolled her eyes.

When talking about the differences between Canada and the United States, without hesitating, Rivard pointed out that the United States seems to be bigger in many ways.

“The cars are bigger here, the streets are bigger here, the drinks you buy at McDonald’s are bigger here, the portions at the restaurants are bigger here,” Rivard said.

Rivard is outgoing and personable. Her transition to the United States has been a relatively easy one. One thing that was not easy for Rivard or the other exchange students to get used to were their lack of transportation. None of the study abroad students have cars and are forced to rely on rides from American friends or public transportation.

Rivard admitted to feeling vulnerable in a city and country that doesn’t work well for people without their own means of transportation. Even getting to the grocery store is an ordeal that most Americans with cars would never think twice about.

“If you don’t have a car here, people look at you like you’re an alien,” said Caroline Blanc.

Blanc, 28, is also from Paris. She studies at the Universite Paris VII Jussieu, Institut Charles V. While at Sac State she is working on her doctorate in English with a concentration in American history. She is doing research for her thesis while in the United States. As a teaching assistant for several French classes on campus, she tutors students in French and talks to French classes.

Blanc’s mother is English and her father is French. She grew up speaking both languages fluently. She was first encouraged to study abroad several years ago. In her early ’20s, she studied for a year at the University of Connecticut.

After returning to Paris for a few years, Caroline decided she wanted to come back and experience the West Coast. Although she is enjoying the West Coast, she does admit that she expected warmer weather on this side of the country.

Though Blanc likes being here, she says she misses her hobbies back home.

“Basketball is my passion,” Blanc said. “I live for basketball.”

She misses her basketball friends back in France but is committed to making her stay in Sacramento a good one no matter how much she might miss aspects of her home. After all, she said, “I want to travel, that’s the main point.”

When talking about how she can love living away from her home country when she obviously loves her home country so much, she gave the mature and contemplative response that traveling is, “a new experience. You get to see new cultures and new people and that’s exciting.”

Blanc and Rivard agreed that traveling abroad is about more than just seeing the popular tourist locations and the sunny beaches. It’s about meeting new types of people, new cultures and the politics, religions, and languages of those cultures. They seem genuine in their desire to prove that ignorance is not bliss and that world travel is abundantly important.

It’s quite clear that all three of these women have created a strong bond over the past six months in the United States. They, and numerous other study abroad students at Sac State, have inevitably become close because of the experiences they are sharing. Even though none of them knew each other before they came to the United States, they have become each other’s family away from family.

Stochitch said that it’s not easy transitioning as a study abroad student and that she wished American students were less hesitant about befriending the study abroad students.

“I think maybe Americans are a little afraid of talking to foreign people because they notice really soon that I have an accent and I think maybe they are a bit scared,” she said.

Though mixing cultures and learning about travel can be difficult, it’s very important to “open your mind and not be shy to talk to anyone,” Blanc said.

Chelsea Follett can be reached at [email protected]