When international students pack for life at the University of Kentucky, they bring the necessities for survival, but they also pack for the heart.
Many students bring meaningful objects that connect them to their home, family and culture.
For first-year business management major Eduarda Daga, from Brazil, some of the most important items she brought were religious: a small saint statue, rosaries and holy water.
Daga said those objects help her feel grounded away from her home in São Paulo.
“I built it like a little altar to pray. Praying has become a way of feeling that I’m at peace. I’m in a place that I feel safe and I feel guarded,” Daga said.
She said it gave her hope and happiness while passing through the visa process to come to the U.S., and now that she is living in Lexington.
Beyond religion, Daga brought cosmetics and perfumes from Brazil. She said that these products remind her of when she was getting ready at her place.
“I brought everything here because I feel that my olfactory sense is what brings me home the most. It makes me feel home just by using these perfumes or using these products,” she said.
For Sofia Ledo, a junior biosystems engineering major from Uruguay, the item that traveled with her from home was not religious but a sweet treat, dulce de leche.
“The one thing I wanted to bring is dulce de leche. I don’t think I could survive without it in my routine,” Ledo said. “It is a small piece of the culture back home that I wanted to keep.”
Dulce de leche is a milk-based caramel sweet she said she could not imagine living without.
“Imagine caramel, but caramel is made with water, dulce de leche is made with milk. It’s the same process just with milk, so it is creamier than caramel,” Ledo said.
She pointed out that this creamy flavor is everywhere—in cookies, cakes, and desserts.
“We even have a Starbucks dulce de leche Frappuccino,” she said. “You just think of it and there’s probably a dulce de leche version of it.”
“Whenever I’m feeling a bit homesick, eating something from back home helps with that. So, I feel like dulce de leche helps prevent homesickness in a way,” Ledo said.
For international students like Daga and Ledo, these aren’t just items, they are physical lifelines to the homes, families, and cultures they left thousands of miles behind to live their dream to study in the U.S.