Waking up at 6:30 a.m., sophomore Daniel Kim cautiously looks around his dorm for bugs.

“I have met many spiders and centipedes in my room,” Kim said. “My room looks like a prison. It is really dark. There is a mini window, but it’s been broken for the past three months and won’t open. When I open my closet, it stinks. The paint smells.”

This year, 14 international students are living in student dorms on the JC campus. There also are two dorm supervisors: Brother Steve Strausbaugh and religion teacher Michael Kimble.  This is the first year of the dorm program. The dorms are next to one of the soccer fields on campus. There are students from China, South Korea, and Spain living in them. Kim is from South Korea.

The first thing that Kim does in the morning is review his homework. Then he goes down to use the bathroom. There is only one bathroom with two toilets and four showers for the 14 international students that live in the dorms.

“The showers are very painful with fast, stinging water to reduce water pressure,” Kim said.

Senior Gonzalo Laura also lives in the dorms. “I don’t like the showers and bathrooms,” Laura said, “I am very tall and the showers are very little. Most of them only reach my shoulders. The dorm rooms are also very little.”

Kim heads to the JC cafeteria for breakfast at 7:20 every day.  Dorm students have to pay for their own breakfast and lunch. There is only one refrigerator in the dorm kitchen, and students are supposed to put name tags on all their food.  Electric appliances are not allowed in the individual dorm rooms.

“I had a mini fridge, but they said it could cause a fire,” Kim said.

Kim has an electric kettle for tea and a juice machine in the kitchen. “The cafeteria food is very oily, with not many vegetables, and is very unhealthy. I bought a juice machine so I could eat more fruits and vegetables, but I don’t have many,” Kim said.

Every Tuesday after school,  Kimble drives Kim to his violin lessons.

“I don’t usually hang out with other students at the dorms. They are very noisy, and I try to get away for my own concentration,” Kim said. “A lot of students goof off, wrestle, sing, play games, and listen to loud music.”

Senior Kevin Yin disagrees with Kim about living in the dorms. “I like living in the dorms because I am living with my friends,” Yin said. “We go play basketball, go fishing, and play golf.”

Dorm students are allowed to walk to Safeway if they tell a supervisor where they are going. However, if they take too long, the dorm supervisors are not happy. “There’s a whole bunch that I don’t like about the dorms too,” Yin said. “The students are also not allowed to have any pets. “Sometimes at night when I’m all alone in my dark room, I start to feel lonely,” Kim said.

Students have to be in their rooms by 10:00 p.m. on school nights, and lights out is at 10:30 p.m.

Weekends are very different for dorm students. They are allowed to sleep in, but they are required to go to church at 3:30 on Saturday.

After church, the dorm students are taken to different restaurants to experience American culture. They receive a free dinner. Sundays are free time for the dorm students.

“I usually just stay all day and do my work,” Kim said.

Russian teacher Edward Miller took three dorm students, Ben Flomo, Monty Urmilevicius, and TJ Yang, fishing at the pond next to JC one Sunday. They caught many catfish, and cooked, cleaned, and ate them for dinner.

“I was trying to do things with them that they hadn’t done before to give them a taste of outdoor life,” Miller said.

He also had dorm students come to swim in his pool when the weather was warmer and gave them a taste of American football.

Miller also took dorm students to a golf driving range owned by Athletics director Larry Dukes. The students received a golf lesson from assistant pro John Kline ’92. “I am trying to give them good positive experiences,” Miller said.

“Living in the dorms is helping prepare me for college,” Kim said. “It is making me study more which is good I guess.”

Rachel Amrhein is a Multimedia Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.