It’s snack break at the colegio (school) and seven year-old me sits and eats my sandwich. My behind hurts from the marble bench. I only got one square of chocolate in the middle of my whole wheat peanut butter sandwich; because my mom was one of those moms. But by now I have mastered the art of breaking up the chocolate into as many pieces as I can and evenly distributing them throughout the sandwich; I loved math. I’m not that hungry today though, so I toss the rest of my sandwich in the trash.
     

“E que te pasa? Que haces? (Hey, what’s your problem? What are you doing?)” It’s my friend Wail (Pronounced Wah-eel).
     

“Que? (What?)” I say.
   

 “Hashooma, hombre! (Shame on you, man!)”, he says “No tiras pan! (Don’t throw away bread!)”
   

 “O, perdón. (Oh, sorry.)” I say awkwardly, confused on how this was a problem.
     

Wail shakes his head and walks away to his other Muslim friends.
                                               

***
   

“Why did he say hashooma, mom?” I ask after retelling mom what had happened at the colegio.
     

“Honey, Muslims don’t throw away bread,” Mom answered, “because it comes from God.”
     

This is just one of the many things that I grew up with. My parents did too. In fact, Dad had to throw away bread with a dark plastic bag around it. A bag that we would get from the local hanut, a kind of store about the size of your living room no more than 100 yards away from your home. Here is where I would learn the basic local language vocabulary. I learn numbers and basic nouns by asking for a dozen eggs and two scoops of flour. I say hello, thank you, and goodbye to the cashier. Then I walk home past the teenagers playing soccer against our house.
     

Sometimes in the evening Dad will get sick of it and threaten to take their ball away. Then if he’s completely tired of it he’ll actually go out and get their ball and bring it inside. Then he’ll take a knife and rip open the ball. Afterwards, he’ll walk up the apartment stairs to the roof, throw the soccer ball, one half at a time, and silently dare them to play soccer against our house again.
     

Soccer is the most important thing to every unmarried male where I lived. What is amazing about soccer is its simplicity and ease. You can play soccer on grass, on a beach, in a gym, or in the streets. I’ve seen it played with a fancy name brand balls, a cheap ball, a tennis ball, and water bottles pulled out of a trash can. You can play one player versus another, or 11 versus 11 with substitutes. You can play a game with a goal, a wall, a garage door, or two shoes.
     

I got to travel a bunch as a little kid. A passport is as necessary to me as a driver’s license might be to you. I’ve had the liberty to be in tons of countries. It’s awesome to see the different cultures and the way they act. My mom likes to do what she calls “people watching”. She would sit on a balcony someplace like the streets of France, and just “people watch.” It seems boring, but it’s surprisingly interesting to take in all the people and watch the way they look and act. Its funny to watch a cold Frenchmen sit at a café wrapped in a thick black scarf sit in a plain, metal, black chair and sip black coffee. Or watch a couple walk down a street in London under pouring rain. Or watch some Spanish shirtless teenagers play soccer on the beach and listen to their arguments.
     

Every culture is different. Where I lived I ate avocado milkshakes all the time, they were delicious. When I tell my American friends about how good they are (yes they were so good I told my friends about them) they were disgusted at the thought. We never ate lunch at school, Americans think that’s odd. The bathrooms were holes in the ground with a platform for your feet and a faucet to fill a bucket that you would use to flush. I wasn’t even living in a very weird culture.
     

Nowadays in America there are all kinds of stereotypes that fly around about people that they don’t know about. I encourage everybody to travel not just to another country but all over the United States. If a Northerner would actually travel to the South they might figure out that not everyone down here is a racist white man that sits on his porch with a shotgun. If a Southerner would actually travel to the North they might figure out that not everyone is a snappy business man that he’s stereotyped to be. If an American was to actually travel to an Arab country, they might find out that they aren’t all the extremist terrorist they’re shown to be on the news. If an Arab was to actually travel to America they might figure out that not everyone is the pretty blonde girl shown to be on TV.
     

I encourage all of you to go out and travel as far as you can. Meet new people and learn new languages. Find out the many interesting things that different cultures around the world provide. You’ll come home with a whole new perspective of other countries. Hopefully someday everyone will mingle with each other all around the world.