Jan Jacob van der Zee is new to campus, and he’s not alone.

He is one of many exchange students experiencing OU for the first time at the start of a new semester.

His urge to study abroad began when he was urged to do so by teachers in his home country.

“When I started my education, my teachers told me ‘if you can go study abroad, do it,’” van der Zee said.

The Dutch business and administration student said he immediately went to his university’s American Exchange section.

“Maybe because of the movies, what you see on television,” van der Zee said. “I was intrigued.”

A combination of advice from a fellow student and the university’s architecture led him to make his decision to head to Norman.

“I had the choice between three campuses and when I looked up their website, I thought OU had the most beautiful campus, buildings,” van der Zee said. “It was the typical American-looking campus.”

Van der Zee’s fellow student made a convincing case for life at OU, he said.

“He told me about the parties, the apartment, the life on campus, the classes,” van der Zee said. “He convinced me right away.”

Van der Zee’s journey is similar to Dutch communication student Leila de Kroon, she said.

“I had about 10 options,” de Kroon said. ‘My first option was Florida, but among the others, my friends recommended me to go to OU because they studied there last year and told me good [things] about it.”

De Kroon is following in her mother’s footsteps by studying abroad in the U.S., she said.

“I wanted to go to Australia but my mother did her master in America, so it kinda became the family tradition to come study to the U.S.,” de Kroon said.

De Kroon is optimistic about her time in Norman, but certain elements of American culture have been a shock, she said.

“What I want is meeting a lot of people and discovering different perspectives of life and experiencing American culture,” de Kroon said. “Even though when I saw they actually had guns in Walmart, I had the shock of my life.”

Word of mouth endorsements for OU also worked for Mexican dance major Brenda Zaizar, who came to OU because a friend who studied in Norman last semester recommended it.

“My culture and American culture are so alike on many points, it wasn’t my first choice,” Zaizar said. “I wanted to go to Canada, but they closed the program before I ... applied.”

Zaizar came to the U.S. because she lives in a village in Mexico with only 600 residents who — for the most part — have never traveled.

“I’d like to try to open their eyes to other parts of the world and inspire others to travel too,” Zaizar said.

For Zaizar, living abroad is a first opportunity to live independently, she said.

“I’m the little one of my family so everyone takes care of me and my mother is always telling me what to eat,” Zaizar said. “Here I have to take care of myself, it’s so exciting.”

Fellow exchange student Mayra Gabriela Guerra has also become aware of the distance between Norman and her family, she said.

“I still speak to my parents everyday on Skype, I think it will probably change. I’m growing, they’ll need to realize that,” Guerra said.

The Bolivian petroleum engineering student said she first discovered the U.S. through a national youth science camp that awarded her with a scholarship in 2007.

“I love getting to know people from all over the world, especially in the U.S. where a lot of people had been raised there but whose parents or grandparents are born in an other country,’ Guerra said.

Interested by this multicultural aspect, Guerra said that’s why she decided to come back to study in the U.S.

“Also I knew that OU was very prestigious in the petroleum engineering field, so I came here,” Guerra said.

Matias Quintana, a Peruvian electrical engineering student also came to the U.S. specifically for his education.

“If I were mechanical engineering, I would have gone to Germany, but for electrical engineering and computer sciences, I had to come to the U.S.,” Quintana said. “They have access to much better technology and software.”

But Quintana did not purposely decided to come to OU.

“Obviously I didn’t think ‘I’m gonna go to Norman’,” Quintana said. “It was the last university left so I thought: ‘Hey why not, it’s still the U.S.’”

Quintana had already visited the U.S. but said he was met by certain perception of people from South America.

“I’ve been asked ‘Do you have cars in Peru, or do you ride llamas?’,” Quintana said.

Quintana said he wants to meet people from other culture exchange ideas and opinions.

No matter where they come from, exchange students seem to share the common purpose of making the most of their experience.

Van der Zee said after going to South Africa to do some volunteer work for three weeks, he knows how much an experience can change someone’s life and wants to improve himself.

De Kroon said, the real test is going out of her comfort zone and trying to be confident and strong even away from loved ones.

Quintana bet his friends he would earn straight As and said he plans to come back to the U.S. after graduating to apply for a master’s degree program.

Guerra said she wants to apply for a master’s program too, but is still a bit afraid about living in a foreign country.

“I don’t know where I will be in a few years, U.S., Bolivia, another country? Who knows?,” Guerra said.

Zaizar expects a lot of growth from this year, she said.

“I’ve been living here for two weeks and I already feel some change,” Zaizar said.