I met J on the first day of school here at Philadelphia University. I was sitting alone at the opening pep rally and J decided to come up and sit next to me. Ever since then we chat weekly about the struggles of being in classes, staying up late to finish projects, and how life is going as a college student here at PhilaU.
J is from Jubail City Saudi Arabia, 6,604 miles away. He confided in me that this step to come here has changed his life. He said “Living alone I learned how to be more responsible with myself. In Saudi Arabia my mom cooked food for me and washed my clothes, here I have to do everything by myself”.
While on the topic of home cooking I asked J what his favorite meal was back home and he said Kabsaa. Kabsaa is a traditional entree comprised of rice and your choice of meat, J’s favorite is chicken. He proceeded to list his favorite ingredients to add, including: chicken, rice, onions, tomatoes, salt, and spices. Through some broken English and un-translatable Arabic cutlery terms I figured out that you mainly cook everything in this pot that J so kindly shared with me. You cook the onions
until they brown then add the chopped chicken, spices, tomatoes, and other ingredients. He couldn’t remember how the rest of the cooking went since his mother typically did the cooking, but he tried his best.
I proceeded to ask J what he thinks the main differences are between Saudi Arabian food and American food. He said, “Oooh, its totally different. I think food in Saudi Arabia is more traditional, while food here is the fast kind of food”. This made me think, the only time my mother typically slaves hours for a meal is usually during the holidays. Besides that, she usually orders pizza or makes Kraft Mac n’ Cheese for dinner. So I can see where J is coming from with that one. J continued to say that “rice is the most popular in Saudi Arabia, while here its burgers”, haha I got a kick out of that one. I guess I never really gave much thought to how ubiquitous hamburgers are here but now that I think about it, every American style restaurant or bar always has burgers on the menu. I don’t know if its as common as rice is there but close enough. J mentioned how everything back home is put on rice while here the food is put on bread or meat. I think a better comparison to make to rice would be bread. You can get anything on bread here; meat, cheese, peanut butter, fruit, vegetables, really we actually do put everything on bread!
After discussing the differences between food there vs food here J say the biggest difference is that they don’t have his new favorite food, cheese steaks, back in Saudi Arabia, although his friends told him some restaurants are starting to make some in the big cities. J commented on that statement that”these days all the world is becoming one whole world” that our Earth is becoming so interconnected with other countries and how other countries are now embracing and incorporating other cultures into their own. The fact that as a world we are progressing as an open society is amazing to me. The fact that a young man from Saudi Arabia can fit in comfortably to his new life in the US and still cherish his traditions from back home is what this foreign exchange program is all about. Bringing in new cultures and learning from them to expand our school and society into a more and open place to live and learn.
By Kayla Kochanowicz
Cultural Crisscross 