As last month's winter break approached, students across campus packed their dirty laundry into duffel bags, boarded planes and headed home, eagerly anticipating two weeks of sleep in their own beds. But for many international students, the destination of choice was familiar: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rather than spend considerable amounts of time and money to return to their home countries for the vacation, each year many foreign students elect to stay in their dorm rooms or to visit friends in the United States.

"It's lonely," says Manjari S. Mahajan '98, a native of India who spent the vacation in her Winthrop House room. "Everyone comes back from vacation and says, 'I was with my family and you weren't.' Ideally, you would like to be home, but I managed fine without it."

Living too far away from Cambridge to go home over vacations is just one of the challenges facing Harvard's international students.

The College's 422 foreign undergraduates grapple daily with issues that many of their American classmates take for granted.

Some students find themselves in an often-frigid climate for the first time. Others must adjust to the American currency system or the constant use of English.

"I'm aware of a different perspective on life here," Mahajan says. "Things that on a cultural level American students take for granted were hard for me."

A New Group

To deal with this cultural transition, a group of foreign students last year organized the Woodbridge Society, of which Mahajan is now president.

She estimates that the club has 200 official members. Any student interested in international student issues is eligible to join.

The founding members of the group, named after Harvard's first international student, sought to give international students a place to interact and to support each other, a function which was not being filled by any of the 27 cultural or international groups on campus, according to Mahajan.

"We were surprised and, in a sense, disappointed that there wasn't an all-encompassing international society," says Ahmed T. el-Gaili '98, the club's vice president, a native of Sudan who grew up in Saudi Arabia.

The need for the group grew out of the feeling among many international students that they have more in common with each other than with their American classmates.

"There are so many different organizations on campus, but there was no common forum where we can meet and interact," she says. "It seemed that there was so much we could gain from each other."

The group, which meets several times a month, was intended primarily as a "support structure" for international students to help them deal with the problems of adjusting to life in a new country, Mahajan says.