In the beginning of my blog, I stated that sense of belonging is an important thing in ones life, which can be seen when people from different countries are attached to the community they belong to even when they are being far away from their country. This sense of belonging sometimes appears in a form of their clothing, the way they talk, and especially on what they consume.
As an international student from Indonesia, I really feel what a sense of belonging really is, especially in terms of what I eat. Never in my two years living in United States, I experienced a day without eating Asian food. My experience really makes me questions about whether that sense of belonging could be taken away from a person, in this case is me. So as an experiment I tried to blend into the Western culture and strip away my sense of belonging to Asian culture by changing my eating habit. Starting my 14 days experiment, everything seemed so easy. At first I thought about it as exciting because I get to eat many types of new dishes. I refused invitations to eat Asian food from my friends and I would go to Western restaurants. Sometimes I even encourage my Asian friends to eat Western food with me. However, as the days proceeded, my mind started to change. Even though the Western food was good, I missed eating Asian food. I figured that Western food contains too much cheese. I would prefer the taste of the spices, chili, rice, essentially: everything Asian.
As an international student from Indonesia, I really feel what a sense of belonging really is, especially in terms of what I eat. Never in my two years living in United States, I experienced a day without eating Asian food. My experience really makes me questions about whether that sense of belonging could be taken away from a person, in this case is me. So as an experiment I tried to blend into the Western culture and strip away my sense of belonging to Asian culture by changing my eating habit. Starting my 14 days experiment, everything seemed so easy. At first I thought about it as exciting because I get to eat many types of new dishes. I refused invitations to eat Asian food from my friends and I would go to Western restaurants. Sometimes I even encourage my Asian friends to eat Western food with me. However, as the days proceeded, my mind started to change. Even though the Western food was good, I missed eating Asian food. I figured that Western food contains too much cheese. I would prefer the taste of the spices, chili, rice, essentially: everything Asian.
However, as I was doing my experiment, I realized that there were some similarities between Asian food and Western food. The most obvious one can be seen in the types of food available for breakfast. For breakfast, I usually eat Mantao, which is a sweet bread dough, or just plain bread with condensed milk, which are all very sweet. When I did this experiment, I usually eat Fruit Loops with milk and honey granola bar, which are also sweet. So I conclude that both Western and Asian breakfast are usually sweet. Moreover, I also found some similarities on the main courses I tried during this experiment. On the second, fifth, tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth days, I ate pasta. On the eleventh day, I finally realize that the reason I constantly eat pasta during this experiment is because pasta resembles Asian noodles, specifically an Indonesian dish called Mie. In Indonesia, I eat Mie with garlic, spices, and various kinds of meat, such as beef, chicken, pork, and even seafood. Italian pasta also has the same characteristic, whereas in my experiment I ate different kinds of pasta with garlic, chicken, seafood, and beef. Other than that, I also realized that the Buffalo wings resemble Indonesian Ayam Goreng. It is basically chicken wings marinated with spices and then deep-fried, which is similar to the way Buffalo wings were cooked. Other parts of Asia, such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand also have this dish.
From this experiment, I learn that a sense of belonging is hard to leave behind because that is just my habit as I am growing. I have to admit that as I went through the days, I just really want to abandon the assignment and go to Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, or other Asian restaurants. Aside from that, the types of Western dishes I picked mostly have the same characteristics of some Asian dishes. I believe there are other Western dishes that have entirely different characteristics from Asian food, but I chose to eat the ones that have some similarities. It shows that I personally still tried to approach my kind of comfort food. As a result, I conclude that although possible, it is hard for a person to give up a sense of belonging or identity to a certain culture, especially if the person had been growing with that culture all his or her life. Until this moment, if I were offered to go to a Western restaurant or a Chinese restaurant, I would probably still choose to go to a Chinese restaurant.
