Difficulties that I have had as an international student

As an international student studying abroad, I have encountered several problems during my first quarter in UCSB such as the differences in culture, commodity price and language. For instance, I was confused about taxes and tips when I had my first meal in the US. It seems that I paid more money than I expected because neither of them appears on our bills in China. Meanwhile, the commodities and food here are much more expensive than that in my country. Besides, I spent couple of weeks to get used to the drinkable water due to the fact that Chinese people always drink boiled water instead of purified water at home.

When it comes to the difficulty that influences me the most, it is the language. As a non-native speaker of English, I kept facing various language problems especially in learning course materials. I need to pay much effort to compete with those local students in certain courses. Most of the time I get confused is because of the poor understanding of English vocabularies and sentences. Thus, I spend more time reading the textbooks and tried to get familiar with those academic terms and theories.