>Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make frie

>Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make friends and acquaintances with Americans, but you're never part of "them". I constantly feel like I'm on the wrong side of a aquarium glass pane, being observed and judged. One of my classmates in university was from mainland China. He loved being in Canada and everything we were learning in school. He'd gone to another university before and already had a degree in a similar field. Then near the end of the last year, he got word from home that his father was getting ill and it was time for him to return and takeover the family business. So after graduation, he left, lost touch with everyone and as far as I know now runs his family's business in China totally unrelated to what we were going to school for and that was that. He seemed to accept everything, but was still pretty sad about it all. Not just his dad being ill, but having to go back, leave all the friends and life he'd made here, give up everything he'd went to school for and just go like the last near decade of his life never happened. I still have him as a facebook friend, he hasn't been online since he left though.