Yousif Al-Khalifa came from Saudi Arabia to Minnesota two years ago, leaving behind the people he loved most for the future of opportunity that he desired.

“I was super happy; I didn’t sleep for days because I was so excited that I’m coming here. I knew that it would be a life-changer for me,” Al-Khalifa said.

Al-Khalifa lay sleeplessly in bed thinking of all of the things he was going to do and study, wondering about the people he would meet and the friends he would make. When the day finally came, however, Al-Khalifa knew it would be hard to say goodbye.

“I just realized that I am going to leave all the people that I love most– my father, my mother. I was smiling when my mom hugged me to say ‘bye’ at the airport. She was crying, but I was smiling,” Al-Khalifa said. “But from the inside I was just kind of crying.”

Al-Khalifa spent his first month getting settled in Minnesota but quickly got to studying.

“When I came here I didn’t speak any English. I studied English for 18 months nonstop,” he said.

Al-Khalifa studied English at St. Thomas’ English Language School. The ELS center director, Kari Fletcher, worked closely with Al-Khalifa in his transition to America.

“When he first arrived, he couldn’t speak much English at all,” Fletcher said. “When international students come and are very low-level English, their personalities don’t yet emerge because there is not a whole lot they can say, and he was kind of more shy at that point. Then over time he started to become more and more open as he improved his English ability.”

Fletcher watched Al-Khalifa’s personality and friendships evolve as his English improved. She believes his desire to branch out from his group and meet people from many other places greatly improved his English because he was always speaking with people of different dialects.

“He kind of became almost like a little ambassador of the area with all of the new-coming students,” Fletcher said. “He started to participate in all of our orientation days. He would show up first thing in the morning and would help all the new students. He didn’t have to; that was the day all of the other students sleep in and just relax, but he was always here.”

Al-Khalifa’s willingness to help and participate made him very popular around the ELS center. He holds his relationship with Fletcher very dear, even considering her a second mom.

“Without her, I wasn’t a student here,” Al-Khalifa said.

Fletcher even invited him to her house for Thanksgiving.

“It’s the first time I eat food from America with flavor,” Al-Khalifa said.

After Al-Khalifa finished his English studies at ELS, he enrolled at the University of St. Thomas.

“Right now I am a freshman, but technically, if you want my real age, I am 21. I am the oldest freshman this year,” Al-Khalifa said.

Following his first completed semester, Al-Khalifa decided that he would be a good fit for a finance major.

“To be honest, I tried to compare two things that I like, money and I’m a social person. So I say, ‘What is good for me? Business.’ So I go with business, and I choose finance,” Al-Khalifa said.

Although older than most St. Thomas freshmen, Al-Khalifa enjoys doing many of the same things. He has not, however, adopted the American love of video games.

“I like to hang out with my friends a lot. I’m not that guy who plays video games,” Al-Khalifa said. “I like to be outside. I don’t like to be surrounded by walls.”

Making friends within ELS was easy for Al-Khalifa. He met many international students from all over. He did, however, struggle when first coming to Minnesota.

“When I started here it was hard because people here from Minnesota — it’s hard for them to get outside of their comfort zone. So that is hard for international students, for me to make a friend and connect with them,” Al-Khalifa said. “But right now I have a good number of friends, also still from everywhere.”

Fletcher explained that making friends with Americans is a common struggle that international students have in their transitions to St. Thomas.

“As students from Saudi Arabia, there are first of all a lot of things they have to overcome to fit into society here. Of course, there are a lot of preconceived notions that Americans have about people from that part of the world,” Fletcher said. “So (Al-Khalifa) says he just wants people to understand that he can be just like them even though he is from this country.”

Fletcher has played an important role in Al-Khalifa’s transition to American culture. She gave him advice about family, friendships and even fashion.

“I always teased him because he would always dress very formally. I’m like, ‘You gotta fit in a little more.’ He looked more like a professor than one of the students,” Fletcher said. “I started becoming his fashion advisor, so he would come in like, ‘Am I too formal?’, ‘Yeah tone it down.’”

Now that Al-Khalifa has mastered the act of dressing casually, he is working on something bigger — changing the image that Americans have about Saudi Arabian people.

“To be honest, I try to change the image that a lot of people who are American have because of social media about my people — that we are terrorists, or we just live in a desert, or we are not normal people. I just want to change this image,” Al-Khalifa said. “I am open-minded; we are normal.”

Marissa Groechel can be reached at groe5630@stthomas.edu.