st. paul

Freshly arrived in the United States, the six new students at Macalester College headed off to see Minnesota at its most Minnesotan.

As part of freshman orientation, the international students each received a ticket to the Minnesota State Fair on Sunday. They had heard about the fried food -- the fried candy bars, in particular, which they could not fathom. So they planned to taste one, to see some animals and to buy a cowboy hat.

The group's yellow school bus arrived just after 6 p.m., as the crowds thinned and the breeze picked up. First up, the agricultural exhibit where nearly 200 calves, lambs and piglets are born during the fair.

"I have never seen this before in my entire life," said Pukitta Chunsuttiwat, staring up at the screen airing a close-up of the latest delivery. A young woman in the group, Emma Cederlund, from Sweden, glanced up, then quickly down. "I'm going to stand outside," she said, quietly.

Tsz Kin Hui, who is from Hong Kong and goes by Kenny, approached a pregnant dairy goat. He placed his hand on her belly, then turned toward the others. "There's a baby in there," he said. "It's moving!"

Simon Sanggaard, from Denmark, petted a cow. "It's so huge," he said, launching a theme that would recur throughout the evening. "Everything in the U.S. is big." Tractors, trucks and 16-inch corn dogs later got the same treatment.

The group weaved through the crowd of beer-bellied men in baseball caps, hipster couples with tattoos, children clutching prizes, women speaking Spanish between bites of roasted corn. From behind black, stylish frames, Hui took note of each passing person.

"I really enjoy seeing people all smiling," he said. "In China, people are so stressful all the time, even on vacation. But people here are all very relaxed, they're all smiling. That feels so good."

Hui picked Macalester, instead of a school in Hong Kong, for similar reasons. There, he'd already be following a strict path to a prescribed career. Here, he's contemplating sociology, psychology, maybe economics. Maybe all three.

The six wandered into the Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum, its dirt being raked for the next event -- square dancing on horseback. A muffled loudspeaker rattled to life and acknowledged the new arrivals: "Let's give them a nice Minnesota welcome!" Hui clapped his hands above his head.

He and Agnes Navuri Biswalo, from Tanzania, called the next stop: a grill that posted your photo if you ate six spicy "ghost wings" in four minutes. A crowd gathered as Hui and Biswalo took the stage. "I've heard about these," a woman in the audience said of the wings. "They're the hottest." A minute in, Biswalo was nodding and laughing. "It's sweet," she said. "And chili. It's sweet and chili."

The two, whose tongues are accustomed to spice, finished their wings with plenty of time left on the blinking, red clocks. Hui's eyes were watering. Biswalo's lips were stinging.

"You guys should go to the all-you-can-drink milk stand," a grill employee offered. "That helps."

"Where is that?" Hui asked, desperately.

Next came corn dogs, because, as Sanggaard put it, "Americans like things on sticks." They ogled the tub of grease in which the dogs cooked and after finishing them off, were too full to eat anything else the rest of the night.

In the building with microphoned salespeople hawking cooking gadgets, they saw massage chairs, Minnetonka moccasins, toy cars, (reusable!) cold packs, bedroom furniture, knives, sewing machines. "TV shopping," Sanggaard said. "It's so American."

But they were curious, rather than disdainful. They paused at the booths advertising Swedish clogs, Thai spices, and traditional Norwegian garb for your American Girl, discussing each.

Cederlund asked a volunteer at the Salem Lutheran Church booth about their advertised "Swedish egg coffee," something unfamiliar to both her and Wojciech Michno, who is also from Sweden.

Just before 9 p.m., the group returned to the entrance where the bus had dropped them off, along Como Avenue. Other Macalester students were gathered there, waiting for the bus, chatting and laughing. "Where are you from?" "What dorm are you in?" "What'd you think of the fair?"

A young woman from Madison, Wis., asked Sanggaard about the film camera around his neck. She raised her bucket of chocolate chip cookies toward him. "Want one?"

"I ate a corn dog," Sanggaard said.

"Aren't they good?" she replied, smiling up at him.

Jenna Ross • 612-673-7168