In the baggage claim at the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, the sign reads: “New international students, welcome to Baton Rouge. If you cannot find a representative from Louisiana State University at the airport, DO NOT LEAVE.”
Alexander Tselebrovski, a graduate student worker for the International Cultural Center for the past two years, tentatively walks the hall between baggage claim and the escalator full of airport travelers.
“Are you from Japan?” he asks an Asian girl loaded down with her luggage.
“No,” she giggles and walks away.
“Sometimes it’s a psychological game,” Tselebrovski says. “It’s this one. No, it’s that one.”
The one he is looking for is Shinichi Amano, a Japanese student scheduled to arrive on a flight from Memphis on Jan. 8 at 6:28 p.m.
ICC staff members pick up every international student arriving at the Baton Rouge airport or bus stations. Amano will be their second pickup today; two more are scheduled to arrive later.
“It’s not as bad in the spring,” Tselebrovski says. “In the fall, there can be as many as 16 pickups a day.”
After renovations in summer 2001, the ICC has an apartment section that temporarily can host 10 students at one time while they find a permanent place to live. The typical room has two bunk beds, four small closets and costs international students only $5 a night.     
With only 10 beds available, Harald Leder, the ICC manager, must be creative when finding emergency housing for new international students.
“We ask other international students to be volunteers,” Leder said. “And Residential Life opens Acadian Hall to help with temporary housing in the fall.”
The Indian Student Association and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, the two largest international student organizations, take care of their own incoming students by finding temporary housing for students within their organizations.
“Otherwise,” Leder said, “we wouldn’t be able to do it.”
At the bottom of the escalator, Tselebrovski scans the crowd of recent arrivals.
“In general,” he says, “it’s easy to tell who is the traditional business traveler and who is the international student in the United States for the first time.”
He locates the only young Asian traveler left and concludes he must be Amano. They exchange greetings and wait for Amano’s luggage by the conveyor belt.
According to Leder, the ICC picks up students in case a problem occurs, such as lost luggage.
Winter weather, however, also causes delays.
“The student may not be on the plane he is supposed to be on,” Leder said. “Then, we have to do some detective work.”
Amano, though, retrieves his luggage with no problem. A second-year student from Osaka, he will major in kinesiology. First, he will spend the night at the ICC with two other students.
Despite the 16-hour flight, Amano’s journey to Baton Rouge went smoothly. However, not all international students’ travels are as easy as his.
One of those students is Roberto Quintana, an aquaculture graduate student from Tijuana, Mexico. He arrived in Baton Rouge Jan. 7 after a 50-hour bus ride from San Diego. A bus strike forced him to endure a 10-hour layover in Santa Fe, N. M., he said.
“[The ICC] is a great place because I had no idea where to go,” Quintana said. “The transportation system here is not very good. There are not many buses or taxis and no subway system.”
The ICC staff will continue to pick up students two to three weeks after school begins. With new U.S. security requirements in place, students have a harder time obtaining their visas.
“Even if they get their information from LSU on time, they may not get their visa for several weeks,” Leder said.
The airline industry crisis, including the bankruptcy of United Airlines, also has been problematic, causing many flights to be canceled or delayed.
“It’s always an adventure when you travel across the world,” Leder said. “You never know what might go wrong.”