International Clubs at OU

With over 50 internationally-related clubs and organizations at the University of Oklahoma, there are so many opportunities to get involved and meet people who are much different from us, whether they’re from another country, have another culture, or they just think different from us. I had the opportunity to sign up for both OU Cousins and Spanish Club this semester.

While I was never assigned an OU Cousin because I signed up a little later, I still love all that OU Cousins has to offer. You get to meet international students and get different perspectives from around the world, which is so cool. As someone from Oklahoma, and just as people from the United States, I think that it’s so easy to get caught up in our own bubble without really paying attention to international events. We don’t really consider the perspectives of outsiders, and we’re almost stuck in our own mindset. I think that with OU Cousins, we listen other people and we learn from them in today’s polarized world.

OU cousins holds events such as the Chickasaw Holiday Lights, karaoke nights, Thanksgiving dinner, and Thunder games. This allows us to show international students what life is like in the United States as well as it helps us get to know with more international students, which, like I said before, is beneficial.

Not only have I had the opportunity to sign up for OU Cousins, but I’ve also been watching Spanish Club and learning more about them. Like OU Cousins, I have not been able to attend any Spanish Club events, but I follow their Twitter. I believe that they have only had one meeting this year, in early September, but as someone who is learning the Spanish language (as a possible minor), I appreciate the club and how it can help people. As someone who wants to study abroad as well as be a doctor in other countries, I think that Spanish is an important language to learn to allow us to communicate with people from other cultures and backgrounds.

From what I can see, in the past, Spanish club brings in speakers to talk to members of the club, and I think that at one point last year, they even taught club members how to make agua de horchata, which is a sweet Mexican drink flavored with rice, cinnamon, and sugar. You can learn how to make it here.

All of OU’s international clubs allow us to get to know people outside of each of our own “bubbles” inside OU and the United States, and I think that OU does a great job of fostering relationships between national and international students.