In the confines of her dorm room, with a picture of Buddha above her bed, Somealea Phoung prays each night.

“I feel fresh [when I pray],” said Phoung, a first-year international student who plans to major in international and area studies and economics. “I feel like I’m going to have luck. There is a passion inside of me and I don’t do it only for myself, but also for my family as well.”

Coming from Cambodia, where 95 percent of the people practice Buddhism, Phoung said she has had a hard time finding a place to do so in America.

“I really want to visit the Buddhist temple [in California] because I miss the feeling of listening to the monks and praying there,” she said. “And if I have the chance, I will go, for sure.”

Phoung said she has met Christians before, the ones who volunteer in Cambodia to teach English.

“Even though [Christianity] is different, they have the same target,” she said. “They want to help people and educate people to live in a happy way.”

Phoung said she thinks destiny and knowledge go together sometimes, and her destiny is to be in this country.

“For me, some people from Christianity make me hate religion,” Phoung said. “Buddhism is a free religion, but Christianity seems to me to be kind of an obligation.”

She said she has found God to be the first one in Christians’ hearts, even before their parents.

“It doesn’t work like that in Buddhism ...” Phoung said. “In Buddhism we think our parents [are] the first God and Buddha is second.”

Phoung said she doesn’t think about not being at the temple.

“To me, to be a good Buddhist doesn’t mean I go to the temple every day,” she said. “I just have it in my heart and follow his philosophy.”

Other international and exchange students at OU also have to adjust to religion in a different culture, but for some, it’s an enlightening experience.

Saleh Alabdullah, a first-year international student studying English, said he is from Kuwait and practices Islam.

“Religion here is fine with me,” Alabdullah said. “I’m happy that I am actually learning about Christianity and different religious beliefs here because there isn’t a lot of learning about different religions in my own country.”

Alabdullah said he knows a lot, but not a lot about religious beliefs.

“In the movies, everything is a lot different,” Alabdullah said. “When you experience it, it’s a lot different than what we see in the movies.”

Samantha Wong, a first-semester international student studying entrepreneurship and finance, is from Hong Kong, an international city that has freedom of religion, she said.

“For me, I’m used to seeing different religions,” Wong said. “I am a Jehovah’s Witness and I don’t face any difficulty here because my religion works the same way here as it does there.”

Wong said the main religion in Hong Kong has been Buddhism, but said there are three mainstream religions there now: Buddhism, Christianity and Catholicism.

“They are all very popular,” she said. “More of the older people are Buddhist, but the younger ones are Christian or Catholic.”

Wong said she thinks it’s probably more difficult for Muslim students to adjust to religion here rather than those who are Buddhist.

“Maybe once a month [Buddhists] will go to the temple,” Wong said. “But they put their own idol in their house and worship it so they worship in a way that they don’t actually need a temple.”

Wong said her family is Buddhist and her father can perform all of his customs at home.

“Once a year he goes to Tibet just to visit those living like Buddhists,” she said.

Wong said her family is very strange because her father is Buddhist, she and her sister are Christian and her mother is in-between the two, seeing good in both sides.

Ana Garcia, a first-semester exchange student studying childhood education, is from Spain, where the dominant religion is Catholicism, she said.

“I don’t practice Catholicism,” Garcia said. “It’s more or less the same though because we are all Christian, but here it’s more Baptists.”

Garcia said she has found young people here to be different from young people in Spain, as far as religion is concerned.

“I’ve seen here that most of the young people believe in God and go to church on Sundays and study the Bible, and we don’t have that in Spain with the young people,” she said. “In Spain, the young people don’t believe in God.”

Garcia said the elders go to church, but the younger generation does not.

“In Spain, the government doesn’t have a specific religion,” Garcia said. “The majority of people are Catholic, but they don’t say they are Catholic. They give money to the churches and recognize the religion, though.”