Every year for 57 years, new international students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been offered a free tour of their new home-away-from-home. And for 57 years there has always been enough community volunteers to drive the international students on the tour.
UW-Madison has attracted large numbers of international students for many years. Despite post-9/11 restrictions on international visitors there are still more than 1,200 new international students who have arrived in Madison over the past few weeks.
More than 300 international students, from 35 different countries, signed up for the tour at an information table which was set up on the UW-Madsion campus this past week. The largest group, 139, were from China; 56 were from India.
As the community volunteers gathered at Union South Sunday afternoon, just prior to the tour, a quick survey found that there were a total of 235 available seats in their vehicles. Such a discrepancy between signed-up students and available seats didn’t seem to faze Terrell Smith, the InterVarsity International Student Ministries staff member who has headed up the tour for more than a dozen years. He said that God had been faithful in the past to make sure that everyone had a ride.
Smith handed out the itinerary for the tour, which would take participants past the Vilas Park Zoo, along John Nolen Drive under the Monona Terrace Convention Center, to the Capitol Square, and then to the Oscar Mayer factory and the governor’s home in Maple Bluff. He also gave participants pointers on conversing with an international student by questioning a scholar from China who said her name was Ming Ming, who had volunteered to come to the drivers and guides meeting room from the student meeting room on the other side of Union South.
Even though most of the participants in the tour had volunteered through various local churches, he stressed the point that the international tour was not designed to be a time of Christian witness through words. Rather it was a time of witness through actions, by showing hospitality to the new residents of Madison.
The tour participants would be invited to further meetings that would include opportunities for recreational activities as well as Bible study. One of the next events will be a hayride for international students on a farm near Baraboo on September 20th.
Finally it was time for the hosts and students to meet and match-up, and answer the question of the day. Would there be enough seat room for all of the students who wanted to go on the tour?
On beautiful sunny late-summer afternoons it seems that there are always a number of no-shows, enough so that even the walk-ins who had failed to register can be accommodated. Smith said there have always been enough seats. Sometimes it’s been close, with no extra seats to spare. This year there were seats to spare.
After the tour the students were taken to a variety of homes around the Madison area for a short reception and then returned to campus. Some friendships formed on this day will continue on through the rest of the students’ time in Madison, and for some, even longer than that.
