International students cut corners to communicate back home
A few times during the school year, Chen Ma has stood in line at the Baker Center post office waiting to send multiple pairs of shoes from Athens to China for her father who struggles to find his 11.5 shoe size back home.
“My father has really big feet,” she said. “It’s hard to find shoes that fit him in China.”
The U.S. Postal Service is mostly used by international students for sending letters or items to family and friends that are rare or too expensive to purchase back home, such as American cosmetics and skincare products, said Ma, a senior studying business and an international student from China.
Tony Arocho, the postal clerk for the post office in Baker Center, said he sees about 150 customers a day, many of them sending mail outside of the United States in the cheapest way possible.
“There are some days I look out, and I have nothing but international students. There are no domestic,” Arocho said. “I have much, much more international business here in this office than others because of all the international students here.”
He said a letter less than one ounce can be sent anywhere in the world for a flat rate of $1.15, usually arriving overseas within seven to 10 business days.
This time constraint, however, is not entirely efficient anymore, when compared to the free apps and social media that allow for long-distance communicating.
Yet, many international students aren’t just able to log onto Facebook to send friends and family a quick “hello” or “what’s up.” Though access to such social media is not limited in the U.S., some countries ban access to popular sites that Americans regularly use, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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That leaves international students — particularly those from China, the largest international group at Ohio University with more than 800 students on campus — looking to communicate with those back home in a bit of a bind.
“When I came here, I signed up for everything,” Ma said. “But, it’s awful because most of my friends in China don’t use these sites, so I can’t share videos with them. Some of my friends back home are jealous of me because I will post a video on YouTube, but they can’t access it.”
The Chinese government even restricts full-access to Google and has blocked the ability for its citizens to use Google’s popular emailing service, Gmail.
“For me, I am really confused, because if I go back to China how can I log into my Gmail?” she said. “I check it several times a day (here).”
That leaves some students scrambling to find the latest communication apps their government has yet to restrict.
“One app that helps is WeChat, and almost every Chinese person uses it,” Ma said. “This app is a lifestyle right now. People share everything on it.”
WeChat gives its user the ability to connect with others through group messages, video chat and sharing photos. According to Tencent, the number of active WeChat accounts jumped from 2.8 million to 500 million users from 2011 to 2014. WeChat is the third top app available for free on the Chinese iTunes App Store, joined by a similar app called QQ – which is number one. These, along with Skype, are used as effective communication apps by Chinese students in Athens, Ma said.
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For those looking to communicate with a country that has fewer restrictions, the option of video chat with popular apps like Skype, Google Hangout and Viber is sufficient for long-distance.
Hashim Pashtun, president of the International Student Union and a second-year graduate student studying engineering, prefers Skype to speak with his family.
Skype gives Pashtun the feeling that his family is right alongside him, he said, even though his home in Afghanistan is more than 11,200 miles away from Athens. Before making a call to his father, he makes sure to clean the parts of his room that can be seen on his web camera.
“I was caught twice that my room was not clean,” Pashtun said. “He would ask me to pick up my laptop and turn it around, and then I would get caught. You cannot lie.”
Pashtun has even shown his family OU’s campus with Skype by walking around on his phone.
But time zone changes can be barriers to communicating.
Because of that time change, Snapchats, tweets and status updates have allowed for those communicating from afar to keep people back home updated without having to speak directly.
“These websites allow you to communicate asynchronously,” said Stephanie Tikkanen, an associate professor in interpersonal communication and new media. “You can feel involved in that person’s life by seeing everything they’re up to.”
Pashtun favors Snapchat for that reason, and frequently sends snaps to his family and friends.
“Before you tell people that you were at a party, they already knew it because it was on your story,” he said. “It lets people know back home your experience here by showing them — not just telling them.”
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Of course, international students use cell phones to keep in touch as well, but they just have to jump through more hoops for them to be effective for overseas communication. Although most international students get cell phones to communicate locally, the expenses required to text and call family and friends abroad require an international phone plan.
Most U.S. carriers offer these, but with limited options for international students at OU. Verizon Wireless can cost up to $40 per month, but still lacks the coverage for 22.7 percent of international students who call back home from the U.S., based on enrollment numbers from the Office of Institutional Research.
Tikkanen said the phone is now considered a device that houses social media, video chat and message apps rather than its sole purpose being for calls like it was intended 40 years ago.
Phone calls have become cheaper due to competition with video calls, she added.
“There’s so many apps and technologies that used to be just telegraph and letters,” Tikkanen said. “Phone calls are in itself so much cheaper now because they have voice over and net protocol. We have Skype, which is significantly cheaper than trying to buy a calling card.”
Liudmila Pestun, a graduate student from Belarus studying international development, enjoys using Viber, an alternative to Skype, to chat with her mom and boyfriend back home.
She tries to video chat her boyfriend as much as her schedule allows.
“It’s difficult, but doable,” said Pestun
“It’s hard for him to understand that I am not able to update him on everything that is going on in my life,” Pestun said. “It’s difficult, but doable.”
Similar to Ma, Pestun frequently sends packages via the USPS overseas. In her case, it’s worthwhile to send cheaper American car parts to her boyfriend, who needs them for his job.
“My boyfriend is a professional racer, so he would buy parts for his cart, and it’s not that easy to find the parts he needs (in Belarus),” Pestun said.
Sending packages from the U.S. to an eastern European country such as Belarus is about $50 or $60 per package, which is cheaper than a Belarusian buying an item outside of the country, she added.
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“People shop online, and then send it to my address (in Athens) because it’s cheaper,” she said. “The idea is they try to support domestic production, so they heavily tax outside items in Belarus.”
To avoid the shipping costs, families sometimes give the items needed to their sons or daughters through other people who might be going to the United States, Pashtun said.
“That is a conventional method of what students still do,” Pashtun said. “If you want to send a small item through the mail, it’s going to at least cost you $20 or $30. So it’s better to give $10 to the person to pay for the extra luggage and take it to them.”
That way is also more secure, because sometimes mail gets lost overseas and the USPS will not take responsibility of a lost package since the final destination is that overseas country and not the direct address, he said.
“Express mail is trackable online when we deliver to different countries, but if they don’t have a very reliable postal service, there’s nothing we can do,” Arocho said. “There are countries that have a security problem, and their employees and people steal the mail. Express is the most secure way to send something international, but it’s also the most costly.”
Regardless, the gesture of receiving a handwritten letter still brings a warm feeling to recipients.
“Letters take on this great significance of romanticism where the wait for it makes them so special,” Tikkanen said. “We have all of this instant gratification, and it’s special when you have to wait for it.”
“Letters take on this great significance of romanticism where the wait for it makes them so special,” Tikkanen said. “We have all of this instant gratification, and it’s special when you have to wait for it.”
Jessie Wang, a senior studying video production and an international student from China, said she likes to send postcards to her family overseas.
“It’s a nice way to say to your family, ‘Look at all the cool places I am seeing. I’m thinking of you.’ And there is no responsibility for them to respond,” Wang said.
The intimacy of a letter outweighs a snap or a tweet for Pashtun.
“If I receive a letter from someone, and I have 100 emails on my computer, I will be happy to receive that one letter,” Pashtun said. “I sent a letter to my dad to thank him one time, and we usually talk every day. But, he really felt special, and he sent me a reply. I kept that letter with me.”
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