UWC-USA Visit

I visited UWC-USA yesterday and today, mostly in light of bringing Motema, Porfia and Alice (UWCUSA students staying with us over Christmas break) back to school. I also had been wanting to go to visit various people such as Sahil (coyear who I met at my interview) and Antonio (one of the USA students who came to our campus in Italy). I got to see both of these people and lots more, it was really fun.
It was a very different experience to be there after being at a UWC that, I found, to be largely similar. I really felt like part of the community, I made friends and met some people that I really like and would like to keep in touch with, even though I was only there for 1 night.
It was exciting, also, to be there when everyone was arriving back from break; I suppose it’s a taste of what I will be experiencing at school in less than a week!
Everyone was out and about and welcoming friends who were arriving up until around 3:00am. – The weather was quite bad and the drive from ABQ was apparently much slower than usual.
Another thing I especially noticed was the difference in atmosphere because of all the Americans at that campus. UWC-USA has 50 American students, compared to 6 at UWCAD. Contrary to what I expected, I really liked this atmosphere a lot. Because of the large number of USA students, you get a very wide range of Americans, from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures; but they all still share the (what I feel like is) underlying United States culture. It felt familiar while still being international and diverse. I was pretty surprised by this dynamic. I kept meeting people who I guessed came from the middle east, Asia, or Africa, but introduced themselves (generally in an American accent) as from Ohio, or Georgia! Many of them came from multinational families and seemed as interesting as the international students to me, yet they were quite American and familiar in their mannerisms and interactions. I must say, I liked it.
I haven’t decide yet, however, if the experience I’m having (while being a little more difficult) is more impacting on a student or not. I kind of feel like living with a vast majority of people who come from totally different cultures with totally different backgrounds, morals, values, ideas, habits, etc. is a stronger experience, but visiting UWC-USA made me want to go to school there, so I think I would have been very happy even at this campus in my home state!
Overall, the experience was great and I met very interesting people, had great conversations, and feel very much more like a part of that campus.