Franziska Jung, graduate student from Biesa Germany fills her plate at the "Food and Fun at Naismith Hall" pool party Wednesday held for all international students as part of their orientation. Among the countries represented were France, Bulgaria, Germany, Japan, China, South Korea, India, and Romania.

Students fresh off 24-plus hours of travel hung their heads like immigrants at Ellis Island, waiting wearily in line for their name tags and room keys. They got on the elevator a few at a time, unlocked the doors to their temporary rooms in Naismith Hall and passed out in unmade beds.

The gregarious ones huddled in the crowded lobby long after they had to, chatting quickly and nervously about their new lives in various strains of English.

It was Aug. 7, and for many new international students, it was their first day in the United States. Most came alone. Some met up with long lost friends from home. Others smiled, hiding their jet lag, and made new friends from all walks of life.

They didn’t know much about their new school and didn’t fully understand the culture that suddenly enveloped them. Not yet, anyway. But over the next week, the 200-plus students who attended International Student Orientation Week would begin to feel comfortable.

After hanging her orientation name tag around her neck, Noriko Shibata, Tokyo senior, took the elevator to the sixth floor. Clothes and a computer filled most of her big metal suitcase, but she left some space for small things: pictures and candy from Tokyo. Pictures so she could remember her home, and candy so she could give a taste of it to her new roommates.

Looking around the bare room where she would spend the next week before moving to Jayhawker Towers, the exchange student giggled anxiously and wondered what she’d do for the rest of the afternoon.

“Maybe I’ll take a rest and go to the library to check my e-mail,” she said pensively.

On the blacktop behind the residence hall, orientation leaders gathered to shuttle students around to pick up supplies.

“Do you need to go to Wal-Mart or Target?” Piero Eugster, Bogota, Colombia, senior, asked an Indian and an Englishman.

The Englishman, a blond-haired sophomore from Stratford-upon-Avon named Christopher Sandall, chose Wal-Mart, 3300 Iowa St., because he’d heard of it, and they climbed into the van. In the mega-store, the Indian, a freshman from Raipur named Atul Koshley, mentioned buying beer. He’s 20 years old. Tough luck.

The next day, Pedro Dos Santos wasn’t nervous. Dos Santos, a 6-foot-9 Rio De Janeiro native, crammed himself into a chair in the back of Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union and waited for his first look at Chancellor Robert Hemenway.

Dos Santos, a graduate student, had been at Baker University in Baldwin City the last four years.

“I came up here a lot,” he said.

Five rows down, Lisa Li, a graduate student from Hubei, China, sat eagerly, waiting for the chancellor and comparing her surroundings to the pictures she’d seen on the Internet.

“It’s much more beautiful,” she said.

Hemenway soon reached the podium, and the chatter stopped.

“The things that we learn when we study in another country are things that inevitably make for a better world,” Hemenway said.

All week, as the students filled out legal paperwork, got physicals and did other tedious tasks, they continued to absorb everything around them. Most importantly, they talked to each other. A lot. Even this was a cultural exercise.

“The people-to-people relation was the weirdest thing for me,” said Luis Parreira, insurance coordinator for International Student and Scholar Services and Rio de Janeiro native who went through this orientation in 1999.

On Wednesday, the students waited in a long line for vaccinations, filling the lobby of Watkins Health Center with noise.

“They’re smiling after three hours in line,” said Henrik Christensen, the coordinator of the orientation week.

Shravan Suresh Arora, a freshman from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, laughed with new friends from India and South America.

“I learned how to say ‘good morning’ in six different languages,” he said.

Standing several people in front of him, Noriko Shibata, the Tokyo student who brought candy, wore a Band-Aid on her left arm. She’d already received her vaccinations but didn’t want to leave the side of two French friends. One of them, a graduate student from Paris named Hanane Zraiaa, tried to explain what the week meant.

“There are a lot of things,” she said. “I met a lot of new friends from other countries. It’s very …”

“… exciting,” Shibata interjected.

And as she chatted and nodded her head fastidiously with Zraiaa, Shibata smiled, happy in a new land.