Daniel Bayer
  Staff Writer

Like Vincent Vega said in “Pulp Fiction,” it’s the “little differences” that people notice when they travel from one country to another.

“Hey, it’s two liters of Mountain Dew for only a dollar,” Antonio Scaccia, an international exchange student from the United Kingdom, said as he spotted a display of the bottles in the Wal-Mart on Cone Boulevard. Back home, he said, you’d pay twice that for only half as much of the sugary, American drink.

Scaccia and his fellow exchange students visited Wal-Mart as part of their orientation to life at UNC-Greensboro and, by extension, in the Unites States. The most striking thing to Scaccia is the sheer size of the store.

“You’d make a fortune if you had something like this in the UK,” Scaccia said. “I mean, it probably makes a fortune here, but the stores back home are much smaller. There are other things. Over there, trash is called ‘rubbish,’ and a sidewalk is ‘pavement.’ And a cab is called a ‘taxi.’ If you said ‘cab’ over there, they would think you were crazy.”

The expedition to Wal-Mart was just one of a week’s worth of orientation activities for the incoming students.

Students are also given tours around campus and have the opportunity to explore nearby shopping centers, including Four Seasons mall, during their first few days.

During pick-up day, when a number of new, jet-lagged international students were brought from Fairfield Inn to Phillips-Hawkins dorm, discussions ranged from the number of automatic cars in America, to the country-spanning popularity of Guns n’ Roses.

Much of the orientation program focused on things that American students would find familiar but that might be slightly different for those on exchange: getting room assignments, figuring out the meal plan and registering for classes.

“There’s a much larger choice of classes to choose from,” Polish student Marta Kowalska said. “You can have your major, but you can also study other things.”

Going over local laws and protocols is also an important part of the orientation week.

Most American students probably don’t need a reminder that the drinking age here is 21, though with it being much lower in most other parts of the world, it can be a helpful reinforcement for exchange students.

Drinking laws aren’t the only major change for some students.

“UNCG is huge,” Scaccia said of the differences between UNCG and his home institution. “Everyone is so friendly. Back home, I was apprehensive, but here I’m comfortable speaking to just about anyone. It’s much more welcoming.”

Scaccia is not the only one who expresses admiration for the university’s hospitable atmosphere.

“It’s very flattering that folks picked UNCG,” Logan Stanfield, UNCG’s coordinator for study abroad and exchange programs, said. “A lot of that has to do with our reputation as a great place for folks to spend a semester.”

The orientation process begins even before the students have set foot in the United States, according to Stanfield.

“We try to connect students here to exchange students through our Peer Ambassador Liaison program, or PALs,” Stanfield said. “We pair them up online, and then they have a mixer where they meet when they get here. It gives them someone they can talk to.”

The PAL orientation day took place on Tuesday, Jan. 12. It was an opportunity for local and exchange students to meet face-to-face and to, hopefully, begin making meaningful connections.

This semester there are just under 50 new international exchange students from a myriad of countries.

“The UNCG program is a one-for-one exchange of students between UNCG and over 100 partner colleges and universities worldwide,” Denise Bellamy, the director of the Study Abroad and Exchange program, said.

The program does not just benefit international students coming to UNCG.

“It’s a real opportunity [for UNCG students],” Bellamy said. “Some of our students have never left North Carolina. The program allows for them to be immersed long-term in local cultures worldwide. And it benefits the students who are here. It’s amazing to have incoming students from other cultures to interact with.”

Stanfield continued, saying, “It’s a win-win situation. Students have rich, life-changing experiences, and it creates better understanding between cultures.”

There’s no shortage of desire to explore North Carolina and the American culture as a whole. Many visiting students hope to see more of the U.S. than just the campus.

“I’m fascinated by everything American,” Scaccia said, mentioning musical icon Elvis Presley in particular. “I said 10 years ago that I’d love to live or reside in the U.S. and here I am.”

Monika Dubiel, a student from Poland, said about what she hopes to gain from her international experience, “I want to see how life is in the United States, For us, it’s a mythological place, and I want to see the reality.”

Majoring in foreign languages,Dubiel hopes to take back with her a better knowledge of the English language, as well as “fresh ideas about what [she] want[s] to do with [her] life.”