Thursday, September 13, 2007
Not even a month ago, freshman Diego Egoavil was on a 2 ½ hour flight from Honduras to Miami. From there he flew to Kansas City, and then it was off to Lawrence to start his college career at KU. He’s only been in Lawrence since August 8th. He’s originally from Peru, but lives in Honduras. A week after he arrived in Lawrence he was told about something that would help him enormously to adapt to life in Kansas. Junior Eduardo Galdo, also from Peru, told Diego about a soccer team full of fellow international students from South America. His new team is called Real Latino, but it has been around a couple years.
Real Latino represents a tiny sect of KU’s international student population. The team’s mass of students that speak both English and Spanish fluently, matched with its ability to give students some of the comforts of home, make it very attractive to some international students.
Real Latino is one of eight teams in the Lawrence Adult Soccer League. It has 18 people on the roster and 15 of them are KU students from freshman like Diego to graduates. The team has an eclectic group of students from all over South America. Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Paraguay, Honduras, Columbia, and Nicaragua are all represented on the team.
Diego says the international students on the team were very helpful in his adapting to life at KU. They helped him with homework and showed him around campus. All the assistance his teammates gave him made Diego feel a lot more comfortable. He is one of five new players on the squad and he is one of the three new freshmen.
Eduardo Galdo, the man who told Diego about the team, himself joined his freshman year in the spring of 2006. Back then he says that the team definitely helped him adapt to life in Kansas. He says the players helped new students make their first connections and answer their questions as well as help them out with the Lawrence nightlife.
Carlos Hernandez, sophomore from Venezuela, had a similar experience last year when he came to Kansas. He says the team helped him to meet a lot more people when he first got to Kansas. Before he even arrived at KU last year he had heard about the team and the Lawrence Sunday league. Playing with some of his international buddies, who all speak Spanish on the field, makes it so Carlos sometimes feels likes he’s not in the States and just playing with his high school buddies. Last spring, Carlos says he began to feel as though he belonged at KU because of the team and some of the friends he had made. The team’s first game was Sunday August 26, and they won 4 to 2. Carlos himself said the game went pretty well, the team didn’t have any troubles, and all the new guys were getting used to the team.
Daphne Johnston, associate director of International Student and Scholar Services, works to help Kansas international students adapt to life in Kansas. I.S.S.S. does many things to help international students get used to college abroad. It offers a Global Partners program, which matches international students up with American students based on their interests. The Lawrence Family Friendship Program is a Lawrence community project that is run through their office and it allows international students to be matched up with Lawrence Families. It also offers a special orientation.
“The orientation is the most important because there are so many questions,” Johnston says. She also says that many of the students meet a lot of their best friends that week. The special orientation this year was August 5-10.
Real Latino plays on an under-maintained field off a winding road near Clinton Lake dam. This simple field is without substantial portions of grass in sections, but it means more than its maintenance would indicate. Although the fields back home are sometimes better, the players play wherever they can. It is one of the comforts of home, even if home is a thousand miles away for this handful of KU international students.
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