"Serve Yourself by Yourself"

           

           When I decided to study in the United State of America instead of studying in my country, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I asked students who study abroad in the United States many questions. Surely, one of them was how is the food in the United States! They answered with no doubt saying that you will definitely miss your mom cooking and the serving, which you do have in restaurants in Saudi Arabia. As soon as I arrived to Austin, I noticed that although Austin is a kind of a small city comparing to others in the States, it has many different kinds of restaurants. However, in my country, we only have one kind of restaurants in terms of the serving method. As a result, looking over the eating habits in both countries, I can observe several differences between eating culture for both countries. I will mention two of them, which are home cooking vs. Fast Food and serving method in restaurants. Beginning in Saudi Arabia, we mostly eat from our home cooking because as a part of our culture women are usually do not have a job, so what they only have to do is taking care of home and cooking. In contrast, here in US most of the people eat outside home, and that it may because both of the men and the women are working; therefore, they do not have enough time to cook. Also, looking over the serving method in Saudi Arabia, we see that we do not need to clean our dish. On the other hand, in US we have to clean our own mess in most of the restaurants, so the American way in serving could be expressed by saying “serving yourself by yourself.” Actually, I liked that you serve yourself in US. I also liked that in my country we eat from home most of the time. Therefore, both eating cultures are having great aspects.