Imagine starting freshman year during spring quarter, leaving home for the first time and being 11,000 miles away from family and friends. I was nervous, apprehensive and scared out of my wits. My well-known independent, adventurous, conquer-the-world attitude nearly lost out to my less-known anything-for-a-sheltered-lifestyle outlook. But my confident self did not allow me to back down. The decision had been made; I had been accepted at Northwestern University near Chicago, and was going to meet that challenge even if I died of loneliness and desperation in the attempt.

So I put on a tough front and requested a single room. I wasn't going to deal with any blonde, blue-eyed, stereo-blasting, gum-chewing North American roommate. I built barriers to protect myself from my U.S. hosts and hostesses... contrary to my teen-age desire to appreciate and adapt to a different culture. I'd always wanted to be a citizen of the world; studying abroad was a step in that direction. The school I chose would offer me a cross section of North Americans, the cosmopolitan urbanites, the neighborhood ethnics, the suburban preppies and the laid-back farmers... a perfect environment to pursue my dreams.

So why the walls? With my convictions, I should have wildly grabbed the first North American I saw on campus (female, of course) and invited her to be my roommate. But once on campus I stiffened with fear... fear of how my fellow students would accept my darker skin, my squinted eyes and my accent. Would they all be snobby and ethnocentric like many of the North Americans in my country? Overnight my focus changed from wanting to understand be appreciate North American culture to wanting to be a hermit, bag my A's, return to my county and be a world-renowned economist.

For the first few days, I mutely went to my classes, hid in the library and my room, and ate silently in a cafeteria corner. The spunky girl I used to be couldn't muster the courage now even to start a conversation, much less initiate a friendship. Everybody fears being rejected, but to be disliked for what you are is much worse than to be rejected for who you are. (You can't change the color of your skin.)

Friday night found me looking for a quiet corner in the library. In my search I caught sight of an extremely blond head smiling warmly in my direction. I wasn't sure he was smiling at me, but I liked the smile anyway. That smile somehow reminded me of a campus fellowship meeting that was going to be held at the student center that evening. I had asked about Christian groups on campus earlier, for I felt that if there was anyone with whom I had anything in common here, it would be those who shared the same belief in Christ. The warmth of that light-skinned face encouraged me to go to the meeting, scheduled for 7:30 pm. When my watch registered 7:00 my courage failed me. I debated for the next forty-five minutes about going.

What finally stirred me from my seat were the faces of my Christian friends from high school and my church, and the face of my brother. Those faces had watched me take off from the airport, encouraged me to seek out other campus Christians in the U.S. and said they would be praying for me and writing to me. Then Isaiah 43:18-20 rang in my ears: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

Until then, I had been trapped by my fears and prejudices. I had tightly clung to memories of life on my island in the sun, crippling the new life of new friends in a new environment. With that realization, my gregarious, adventurous spirit revived within me. I grabbed my sweater, purse and books, and raced off to the meeting.

I entered quietly, slipped into a back-row seat. As I looked up, there was the beaming blonde again! I smiled back at him, finally disrobing myself of my prejudices and fears, and I sang the familiar songs and read the familiar Bible passages with those North Americans around me. I no longer felt like a foreigner; it was no longer them versus me. I was part of their group, and I knew that if I allowed them to, they could plan an important role in my life during the next four years.

Fear and prejudices arise on both sides of any cross-cultural interaction. I had to decide to allow my U.S. counterparts into my daily existence in the same way that they had to decide to welcome me, not only to their country but also into their individual lives. The campus fellowship succeeded in this. They chose to take an interest in me for who I was and not for what I was. I appreciated being liked for being Aye-Tee Teo who happened to be a foreign student, instead of the foreign student to whom good Christians should minister.

AYE-TEE TEO MONACO, who is from Singapore, still lives in the United States and is happily married to a North American.

Copyright Information:
Reprinted from an Inter Varsity HIS magazine article.