Marshall University’s INTO Center is preparing for its upcoming Easter Egg Hunt. The INTO Center’s Easter Egg Hunt will be held inside the INTO Center Monday.

INTO’s Student Engagement Coordinator, Kenny Jones, said he likes giving the INTO students American experiences and he figured an Easter egg hunt would be a good way to show them more American culture. The Easter Egg Hunt will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“I’ll hide plastic Easter eggs around the INTO Center,” Jones said. “Most of them will have little slips of paper in it saying they can come to me and get a piece of Easter candy.”

Jones said one addition to the event this year is the golden egg, which holds something different than all the others.

“The golden egg is what they’re hunting for,” Jones said. “Now everyone’s only allowed to bring me one egg, one regular egg, but then they’re all able to look for the golden egg that I hide here in the INTO Center. The golden egg holds a cash prize in it, it’s not physically in there, but I am going to give away a gift card for the students for whoever finds that egg.”

Thio Vu, from Vietnam, works in INTO as a desk worker. Vu said the egg hunt is special for Easter and that she, and a lot of international students, don’t have the experience of doing that in their home country.

“That’s why we are very excited and we’re kind of curious because I never experienced the egg hunt before,” Vu said. “It’s a good time for us to understand more about American cultures and maybe we can make more new friends, not like know more international students, but also more American students in that respect.”

Jones said one thing he thinks Americans like about international students is their culture and how different it is from United States culture.

“They’re here in America so they want to experience those things,” Jones said. “I do the same thing with other American holidays like Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving. Things that are very known as like American things and traditions. And the students really want to experience those things, which is why they come to the United States.”

Jones said it is really important for the INTO students to interact with Marshall students from the United States.

“I think it’s better for them to interact with their peers, someone who can relate to them on a more personal level,” Jones said. “Someone that they feel more comfortable talking with that’s not a teacher or isn’t a staff member, and they’re still able to learn from us, but they’re able to learn different things from their peers.”

Matthew Groves can be contacted at [email protected].