International students host “Spiders Around the Globe” social event

 Editor's note: Collegian staff members participated in the Spiders Around the Globe event. 

On Saturday March 18th, international students–with help from the Office of the International Education–hosted a social event welcoming students from different cultures to meet members of the University of Richmond’s international community. 

Spiders Around the Globe: FUNtastic Social Evening took place in the International Commons at the Carole Weinstein International Center. The festive night was filled with icebreakers, games, prizes and snacks from around the world. 

The event had over 25 attendees, including a few prospective students from the international community, who were able to meet other members of the international community here at UR.

First-year Minh Tran is an international student from Hanoi, Vietnam. She feels that the campus structure encourages her to find and connect with students who have a similar upbringing to hers, she said.

“Because of the international student orientation at the beginning of the school year, our community members get to meet and know each other very [early on], and this program helped us build long-term relationships,” she said. 

The event reinforced Tran’s sentiment, as the initial round-group icebreakers gave everyone an opportunity to learn more about the community members’ cultural backgrounds, she said.

Leticia De Almeida Sbrocca is a senior exchange student from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil completing her second semester at UR. 

“I am from a big city and I find that people [in Richmond] are so nice. They offer to get the door for you and smile at you when you’re walking by, and I think that’s really cool and definitely something I like about living here,” Sbrocca said. 

One of the many games was musical chairs, featuring several genres of music including K-Pop, Bollywood and Latin music. Even though most participants had just met each other that hour, every round of the game was filled with dancing and camaraderie as everyone competed for the last chairs. 

The event concluded with a partner game where groups of two were assigned to find the “craziest” shared fact about each other.

As of Fall 2022, there are 307 undergraduate international students at UR. Engaging with different communities was a way to foster a well-rounded global perspective, and students agreed that social events like Spiders Around the Globe: FUNtastic Social Evening are great forums to facilitate such interactions.

Contact international writer Anne-Valerie Clitus at annevalerie.clitus@richmond.edu