As time has passed, I have added more to my list. For better or for worse, America is an extremist country; you guys have the most brilliant people, but at the same time the dumbest, the most arrogant and the most humble. You have the best-looking people and the ugliest, the thinnest and the fattest, the greediest and the most naive, the quietest and the loudest. But how could you not be extremist when you have the likes of Bill Gates, Oprah, President Obama, Paris Hilton, Bill Cosby, The Simpsons, Madonna, Abraham Lincoln, Brad Pitt, Steven Hawking, Hugh Hefner and so many others within your borders?

I could have chosen anywhere else in the world to do my semester abroad. I chose the United States because of the education quality and the good programs in my major. I don’t know why I chose Eau Claire, to be honest, but I don’t regret any second of my time spent here. However, between the Chinese Buffet and China Town, I would rather the second one.

If it wasn’t for the University, Eau Claire would be a big nursing home surrounded by tumbleweeds. I find it interesting how most of the American students think this is how life runs everywhere else.

I know I can’t generalize, but I’m going to talk about what I have heard and observed in these past five months.

I don’t expect people to know where Colombia is, nor do I expect them to know what the capital of Colombia is (which, by the way, is Bogotá). But I do expect people to know there is a world outside the U.S., even outside Wisconsin; a world of diverse cultures, traditions, languages, religions, political, economical and social systems.

I know you have all grown up in one of the most powerful countries in the world, where everyone wants to get in, not get out. A country where the system works, and that makes you forget about another possible way of life. But guess what? There are places more beautiful than here, people more interesting out there, good movies made by others besides Hollywood directors, food other than pizza to eat, music besides Beyoncé to listen to and many new and different things that deserve to be known by you.

I am not saying that at the age of 20 you must know the entire world, but doesn’t it interest you to see the Athens ruins, where the base of our civilization was created? Or what about the country of Alexander the Great? The world of Putin? The country of the Beatles?

And if you can’t go to these wonderful places, they can come to you by books, documentaries or, even better, with the international students that attend here. This semester I have met awesome people – some Americans of course, but most of them from all over the world.

I am leaving Eau Claire knowing that “Nasdravie” means “Cheers” in Macedonian, that Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, that each city in Mexico has a different word for “piggy-back ride,” and tons of other cool and interesting things I have learned from my international friends while studying here.

I would love my university back home to be full of foreign students. Don’t you just find people who have grown up in the same conditions as you have, with pretty much the same story, as boring as death?

I based my reasons for traveling here on the improvement of my English, development in my career, my fondness of the American culture, but even more importantly, on the opportunity to know other experiences, languages and cultures.

Besides the gain in pounds, I am leaving the U.S. knowing I am going to come back – not because I want to leave my country – but because I feel welcome here.

Pinzon Mendoza is an international student from Colombia studying journalism and a guest columnist for The Spectator.