By Emily GlazerThe Daily Northwestern

With classes over and finals looming, students at Northwestern know Winter Break is around the corner.

From Dec. 8 to Jan. 2, NU students make their way back to homes all over the world.

According to NU’s Office of Undergraduate Admission Web site, 128 of the sophomore class’ 1,672 students are international. With international students representing more than 7 percent of the Class of 2009 alone, one can only imagine the number of lengthy trips home made by all NU’s international students.

Weinberg freshman Yalin Buyukdora said he plans to go home to Istanbul, Turkey.

Opening up Google Earth, he showed an interactive map of the world illustrating the 12-hour flight he’ll take to travel from Evanston to Istanbul.

Buyukdora said he is particularly excited to return home over Winter Break because Ramadan – a holiday he usually celebrates with his family – fell during October this year.

Saad Youssefi, a Weinberg senior from Morocco, is also affected by living so far away from where he grew up.

“For international students, much time and effort is spent to adjust to the different climate and time zone at home and on the way back to Chicago,” Youssefi said. “The duration of the break is actually reduced due to this constraint.”

Youssefi said he plans to travel home to Morocco during Winter Break.

“A lot of my friends go to school in other parts of the U.S. or Europe, so winter tends to be a perfect get-together,” he said.

But Youssefi also said that though he goes back home during the winter, it is not always easy to spend a lot of time with friends, because other students’ schools have breaks that begin later in December and last longer into January.

“Due to the Northwestern academic schedule and the difficulty to find a flight back, I did not always get a chance to celebrate New Year’s Eve,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it this year though, since I’ll get to actually celebrate (it).”

McCormick senior Andres Berumen plans to go home to Torreon, Mexico.

“It’s always nice to go back and see all of my friends and family,” he said.

Berumen said he also enjoys eating “good food” at home and recalled his family’s traditional Christmas dinner and a memorable New Year’s experience, in which he organized a mariachi band for midnight, got a pi