{"id":8206,"date":"2025-07-22T16:27:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=8206"},"modified":"2025-07-22T21:27:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T02:27:43","slug":"laughing-in-every-language-making-friends-across-continents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/laughing-in-every-language-making-friends-across-continents\/","title":{"rendered":"Laughing in every language: Making friends across continents"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is the last week of what many alumni have called the \u201cbest summer of their lives.\u201d Soon Natalia Abuladze of Tbilisi, Georgia, will be more than 5,000 miles away from where she spent a month with the 89 other cherubs. She knows saying goodbye will be painful, but for the moment, it slips her mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Abuladze sits in the lounge on the fourth floor of Jones Hall, narrating a story to friends. In the heat of conversation, she switches to Georgian unknowingly. The expressions of her fellow cherubs are the only indication of her mistake, before the group bursts into laughter.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2025 cherubs came from far and wide to share a summer lakeside at Northwestern University. Among the 90 enrolled students, nine were from outside of the United States \u2014 representing China, South Korea, Georgia and Canada.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCherubs is really like a mini United Nations,\u201d Jason Wang of Shanghai and Toronto said. \u201cThere\u2019s so many people with different backgrounds, but we all have the same united goal, which is our passion for journalism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While Wang said he didn\u2019t experience culture shock, switching from solely speaking in Mandarin to English was difficult. He said he noticed how the cherubs often used the phrase \u201clocked in,\u201d to which there is no Mandarin alternative.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jane Hahn of Seoul, South Korea, said what surprised her most during her month in Evanston was how welcoming fellow cherubs were.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s American culture or if it\u2019s a cherub thing, but I feel like a lot of people were willing to reach out first and include everyone,\u201d Hahn said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hahn added that the only thing she missed was eating authentic Korean food.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back home, Hahn said she is used to a wide variety of cafeteria foods. She said Sargent Hall\u2019s frequent potato and pasta dishes took some getting used to.<\/span><\/p>\n

As attending cherubs was only her second time in the U.S., Abuladze said she enjoyed questioning everything around her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe main reason I wanted to come here was to go back and change the way things are in Georgia,\u201d Abuladze<\/span> said. \u201cMy passion for journalism was mainly triggered by the political tensions. Injustice is not documented enough.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As Wang said in a Sunday Club audio project, \u201cit\u2019s not goodbye, it\u2019s just turning the page.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to be more optimistic, you can think about the fact that you have friends all over the world,\u201d Wang said. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly the case for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diverse cherubs forge international bonds over a short four weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":9610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,342],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[428],"class_list":["post-8206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-front-page-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":428,"user_id":224,"is_guest":0,"slug":"matildahaney","display_name":"Matilda Haney Foulds","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c6153152cbc65e8074e8d2f2672b1d06b7ac92544becf36cab32ab014a9d8bf9?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Haney Foulds","first_name":"Matilda","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8206"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10116,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206\/revisions\/10116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8206"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}