When we were given this blog assignment I thought it was going to be hard to find an international student and I slowly looked around and relized they are everywhere on campus. I thought how amazing to have that many students from so many different countries.  Having so many people from all different walks of life really adds to the diversity of our school and truly enriches all of our college experiences.  Then I thought that it might be very hard to communicate with this student. However, after I got the chance to meet Irina from Russia, I found out quickly that she was no different from me and was easy to communicate with. Irina works in the kitchen in Butler Library.  I started telling her what I was doing and she was very happy to help.  I asked her questions about the media differences between the US and Russia and many of her answers surprsied  me. When I first asked what differences she has noticed in the media here and the media in Russia, she quickly responded by saying that most of it is the same . What I thought was surprising that right after that she went into saying how they have MTV in Russia but they have both a Russian channel and American MTV but the American is more popular.  Right off, I thought to myself wow I bet she is Gen Y because when I asked her about media she first thought of MTV.  Irina also told me that if you want English speaking channels you must get cable otherwise you can’t get it.  I thought that was kinda of surprising because here in America we have many cities where regular TV has Spanish speaking channles already on it.  She told me that it is amazing to her how many channels you can get here on TV because in Russia everything is the same concept they just don’t have that many channels.  Irina also told me that we  Americans think we gossip about Stars and other juicy information but it’s really bad over there.  Basically, gosspi about celebrities and stars is on a whole other level.  They of having something called the Yellow Pages which is  where a ton of gossip is printed just about celebrities.  Just like Americans, they have gossip magazines often even ran by American journalism companies but they are  Russian names.  In there magizen that is where they print there lead stories about stars juicy gossip from around the world.  She said the media rarely ever gets any truth in the magizines or Yellow pages. Irina told me that Russia has not always been pretty much like America.  She said when it was the Soviet Union the government didn’t want the people knowing what was going on in the world around them. Today though they stay up on there goverment and what is going on in the world around them .  She explained to me that growing up TV and news were extremely censored and she does not remember “entertainment” TV being allowed until after the fall of the Soviet Union.  Today, Irina says Russians are a lot like Americans.  They love their MTV and have a ton of reality shows.  Irina remembers watching Russia’s first reality show, “Behind the Glass,” which was a version of America’s Big Brother.  Behind the Glass Overall, Irina believes the biggest difference is the amount of programming here in United States.  The content of programs in Russia can be very similar but she says we have more variety and more options and hopes that Americans don’t take that for granted.