In cold weather, some unfamiliar students embrace “a new mentality.”

As snow falls and temperatures remain consistently below freezing, many Pennsylvania natives have settled into the yearly winter routine. But for others, Happy Valley weather has been a new challenge.

Some international students and Americans from more temperate zones have had to learn to adapt to previously unknown practices and conditions.

Fernanda Lopez is a freshman at Penn State, who originally hails from Lima, Peru. The telecommunications major said the lowest temperatures she had experienced back home were around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lopez said she was dealing with the new weather via a two-pronged approach, which she termed “crying and layering.”

The temperatures are one thing, she said, but the lack of humidity, unlike her native Peru, makes the outdoors much less approachable.

According to Lopez, the adaptation process, outside of its physical demands, has been very “emotionally challenging.”

“The wave of coldness hits my face, and I just cry,” she said.

This may be exacerbated, she said, by the summer conditions she left from in December. In the southern hemisphere, it is summer and the days are long. Lima’s temperatures have not dropped below 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the past week.

Lopez said she has yet to go sledding or participate in other traditional winter activities, though she said she hopes to soon.

Ella Freda also said she had yet to go sledding. Though she did manage to snap some photos in the recent snow storm, she said.

A native of California, Freda grew up in the Bay Area between San Francisco and San Jose.

She said the amount of time spent indoors and changes in dress were almost like embracing “a new mentality.” Plus, the freshman said the different weather also necessitated a new wardrobe.

“If you’re indoors and you have a reason to go outdoors, but you can maybe get away with not going outdoors, you’re going to stay inside,” she said. “That was never a problem before.”

On the plus side, Freda said she appreciated Happy Valley’s lack of wildfires and earthquakes.

Though the cold is normal, the notably low temperatures may not be, according to Bruno Rojas.

“Definitely what we’ve been having in the past three weeks is below average [temperature] from a meteorological standpoint,” he said.

Rojas is a graduate student at Penn State pursuing a Ph.D. in meteorology. He specializes in intensity and structural changes in hurricanes.

Hailing from Miami, Rojas said he had not seen snow himself until he was 18 and studying in Oswego, New York.

“I expected snowflakes to be an inch or two big, but really they were like two millimeters big,” he said.

Since then, he said his wardrobe has “more than doubled.”

As for now, Rojas said he expects some warmer days followed by “mixed precep[itation]” of rain and snow and another “cool off.” This could be followed, he said, by a leveling off of winter temperatures relative to current chills.

Kyle Yue grew up a little over a hundred miles to the northwest of Freda, though they share a relatively similar climate.

The Sacramento native said he had seen snow in the Lake Tahoe region of California, which he and others in the area simply call “the snow,” but recent weather in Happy Valley has been his first experience with true snowfall.

Yue said he expected “snow would come down harder,” noting that small flakes don’t appear very imposing in the sky, though they do add up once on the ground.

Strapping a sled to the back of a car, Yue said he and some friends enjoyed sledding hitched to a bumper rather than down a hill.

Though he may be checking his weather app much more, Yue said the cold season has been “manageable” so far.