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Vivian Chung, a second-year psychology student, came to UCLA from Hong Kong. Chung said it took s

Vivian Chung’s faint British accent tells a story her appearance does not relay. Despite the typical Southern California fall attire she wears – tinted Chanel sunglasses, black flip-flops, black tank top and jeans – the Chinese second-year grew up in a different culture than that of Los Angeles.

Just more than a year ago, Chung, a psychology student, left her home in Hong Kong to begin college in Los Angeles. She had visited the city only a few times, when she was younger, and envisioned it as a reflection of media images such as the television show “The O.C.”

“I wanted to go to California. It sounded amazing,” she said. “I wanted a change. I wanted to be away from everything. I wanted to experience new things.”

But though Chung is thousands of miles from her Chinese home, the hint of a British accent in her speech is a constant reminder of where she is from.

China ceded Hong Kong to Britain in 1842 after the Opium War, leading to more than a century of British rule over the island, which included British teachers in Hong Kong schools – thus Chung’s accent.

Chung said that though most students have been accepting of her, she constantly encounters surprise at how well she speaks English.

Stacy Young, a second-year physiological science student and Chung’s close friend and roommate, said she noticed Chung’s British accent immediately when she met her during freshman year and assumed she was from Hong Kong.

Instead of being surprised by Chung’s English, Young said she was impressed by her bravery in coming to a new country by herself.

“She’s courageous, gutsy,” Young said. “She’s the epitome of growing maturity in college. She’s so much different than the first time I met her.”

Chung spent the early years of her education in traditional Chinese schools where, she said, from first grade on students deal with the pressures of midterms, finals and class rankings that were used as opportunities for parents to boast about their children’s success.

“It wasn’t about going to school and finger painting. It was about studying,” she said.

Recreational activities were not emphasized the way they are in U.S schools. During exam time, the few recreational outlets students had, such as physical education, would be “sacrificed” in favor of studying sessions, she said.

Fearing the potential fallout from the transfer of Hong Kong back to China in July 1997, Chung’s parents fled with her and her younger brother William to Canada before she entered fourth grade. The transfer had been agreed upon in a 1984 treaty between China and the United Kingdom.

In contrast to traditional Chinese school, where there was “no time to slack off,” and the atmosphere was intensely competitive, Chung said her school in Canada was relaxed and more about trying out various areas of study and extracurricular activities.

“The days were a lot more spread out, a lot more free time. I didn’t have to work that much. I was concentrating on learning English. Intellectually it wasn’t very challenging. There was just a language barrier,” she said.

After three years in Canada, Chung’s family returned to Hong Kong, where she enrolled in a private international school. In her new school she was surrounded mostly by the white and Indian children of Hong Kong businessmen.

The return to Hong Kong presented Chung with a new language barrier: She could speak, read, and write in English, but could not write in Chinese very well.

She said the international schools in Hong Kong are Americanized, taught by English-speaking teachers unlike in traditional Chinese school, and influenced by American pop culture. Chung said she did not spend time with many of the few Asian students at her international school, but the ones she did know were Americanized just like her.

While traditional Chinese students would go sing karaoke, Chung said she and her friends adopted a more American social lifestyle by bar- and club-hopping. Chung said that is one of the things she misses most about Hong Kong, which has a legal drinking age of 18.

However, she said she is loving her UCLA experience and is even considering staying here after graduation because of the laid-back atmosphere and ever-present sunshine.

But UCLA is not exactly a reflection of the images she saw in Hong Kong, she said.

“There was a definite stereotype (in Hong Kong) of L.A. people being beautiful and they’re all blond, all tan and all the guys are surfers,” she said.

Chung also faced a situation familiar to many new students, international or not: discovering that she was no longer the smartest student in class.

“I didn’t expect UCLA to be so challenging,” she said. “I have to work really hard just to be mediocre.”

Chung is not alone in her struggle to deal with the newfound challenges of university-level education or adjustment to cultural differences. There are many student groups on campus geared toward helping international students fit in.

Tania Makayed, a fourth-year economics student and president of the International Students Association, said the ISA provides a network of support for international students from across the world to make the often-challenging transition to life in the United States.

“When people come from abroad, a lot of them tend to stick to people from their own groups. We try to break the people away from that. We want to make sure they blend into this campus and make American friends,” she said.

But even though the California sunshine has wooed Chung into loving UCLA, it hasn’t completely stolen her heart.

“I want to stay here in the future, but I don’t know what my parents would think about that. Hong Kong’s definitely still home.”