When Xinjie Gonos moved from Yellow Mountain, China, she could barely fit a bed in her tiny Gainesville apartment.
Gonos, who graduated from UF in 2009, now runs US Ready, Inc., a company she started in June to help international students with everything from finding a suitable apartment to learning sarcasm.
This month, she’s offering these services individually, not grouped together as a several-hundred-dollar package, like they have been for about four months.
Currently, US Ready’s local package offers students help finding an apartment, banking, getting a cell phone and practicing their English for $500. For $800, students also get help grocery shopping and a person to pick them up from the airport.
Although the company isn’t a nonprofit, the 29-year-old said she tries to keep prices low.
"Anything we can do for free, we will do for free," she said.
Gonos came to the U.S. in 2007 to study electrical engineering at UF. She said she had a hard time adjusting.
To integrate UF international students into American culture, she said she holds events, such as Sarcasm and Slang 101, Bar Drink Tasting and International Friends and Dinners. Each event draws about 30 people.
Students come from all over the world — China, India, Saudi Arabia and France — she said. The events provide a way for students to learn about each other and other cultures.
"It’s still good to know about different cultures," she said. "In your (spare) time, you can be doing this or that, but you can do something meaningful."
Many international students don’t know English slang, Gonos said. An American co-worker once told her he would be a fly-on-the-wall, and she didn’t know what he meant.
The bar-drinking event helps students learn how to order a drink at a bar and what each drink tastes like, she said.
"Next time they go there, they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m a boss; I know what I’m doing,’" she said.
For the dinners, students carpool and practice their English as they order food. At the beginning of the month, the group met for dinner at Andaz Indian Restaurant.
Daming Wu, a UF international student from Shanghai, China, came to the U.S. two months ago to get his master’s degree in business management. He saw Sarcasm and Slang 101 on Facebook and decided to go.
"We feel difficulties to understand their jokes," the 24-year-old said. "This kind of event is really great for us."
In the future, Gonos said she wants to expand US Ready to be a national company.
"I want this to be like a one-stop place," she said.
Contact Caitlin Ostroff at costroff@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @ceostroff
