Tuesday 6 November 2012

Cross Cultural Cooking

So our flat has decided to have ‘family dinners’, where each of us cooks a meal for the entire flat. When my turn rolled around I whipped out this recipe for fettuccini alfredo that my mom taught me how to make. It’s the basic alfredo sauce with some diced garlic, the whole preparation just takes about 45 minutes. After making it the first time our British friends got a taste of it and really enjoyed it. I’ve since made it about 3 or 4 times. Chalky, our British friend, even cooked me and some other flat mates green curry in exchange for dinner one night. 

Preparing dinner with Camille, Justin, & Thomas.

Last week our French friends invited us over to their flat for fajitas (I was very curious to see how the French handled Mexican cooking). Yesterday we had them over for fettuccini alfredo to return the favor. We had a blast and enjoyed a night of good food, conversation, and hookah. Everyone we have met in Oxford has been very nice, but we seem to have made really good friends with Thomas, Camille, and Pierre. It would be awesome if they could come visit us sometime in the US.
All of my multicultural friends have made my psychology research project a little more interesting as well. Since I’ve been recruiting participants by hand, I’ve used most of my friends as participants. The project investigates the impact of semantic processing of song lyrics, which are in English. Including different participants from all over the world means that the findings will pertain to native English speakers and people who learned English as a second language. Recruitment has been slow as of late, but I’m sure we’ll pull through in the end!

I feel like all of my posts over emphasize cultural exposure and differences, but it really is an amazing thing. Our friends have been curious about everything from fraternity/sorority life to the prevalence of plastic surgery. We also have found a lot of questions about other cultures as we meekly admit that we are excessively ignorant. Mel and I joke that our view of French culture is based off of Disney's Beauty & The Beast and the following video:



The club scene is pretty popular among university aged students in Oxford. Since drinking is legal at age 18, clubs, pubs, and bars work harder to appeal to young audiences. Popular music preferences are very similar, but the UK seems to be a little behind on recent artists.

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