My name isn’t ‘Fajita’: The life of a UNC international student

I’ve been called many things in my life, but fajita was never one of them. That is, until I came to UNC.

If you’re an international student, you probably find yourself having to constantly repeat your name when introducing yourself to someone new and you’ll watch them struggle to say it properly. In fact, I don’t think anyone here has gotten my name right from the first try. This is why I carry my OneCard in my phone case, so that whenever anyone asks me for my name, I can just have them try to sound it out.

The only problem with Tar Heels being so nice is that they keep trying to say your name correctly even when they clearly can’t. Others just straight up tell you that they can’t say your name, like my hall-mates Jace and Daniel, the guys that call me Fajita.

I’m not going to lie; being from Abu Dhabi makes for a great conversation starter. In fact, my roommate’s friends all know me as “that guy from Abu Dhabi”. Our first floor meeting opened with the generic name, hometown, major, and fun fact introduction. That day, I learned that pretty much everyone here is “from [insert small town name ending with –borro or –ville], just 20 miles away from [insert name of big Carolinian city], but you probably haven’t heard of it”.

The nice thing about being foreign is that your hometown is also your fun fact, so you don’t have to pretend like you play an instrument to impress a room full of strangers. After people find out that you’re international, they start asking you weird questions about how you got here and where you’re from. I also learned that a lot of people think Abu Dhabi is in India — I blame high school geography.

Living thousands of miles away from home can be really intense sometimes, but residence hall study lounges are an international student’s best friend. When you live so far away, your day is your family’s night and vice versa. Therefore, I have very limited windows of time, such as 1-3am, to get a hold of them on FaceTime. And my roommate doesn’t want to hear me calling my mom at 3am.

When I speak in Arabic on the phone, a lot of heads turn my way, but not in a bad way. People here seem to really appreciate multilingualism, and they’re usually interested in learning a few words from your language. Whenever my friends ask me to teach them some Arabic, I always start with curse words– there’s so many. I enjoy this low-key kind of cultural exchange because it’s fun and people learn new cuss words, so it’s a win-win kind of thing.

Despite being a U.S. citizen, I never really lived in the States before coming to North Carolina a month ago. This created an intense culture shock. To be honest, most of the shock wasn’t because I didn’t understand the culture here, but it was because people didn’t understand my culture and values.

There’s so little that is known about the Middle East here. Most people are surprised by the fact that I don’t have a heavy Arab accent. What they don’t know is that a substantial portion of Middle Easterners are bi- or even trilingual. We also are heavily exposed to Western culture and media, so I grew up watching the same TV shows and listening to the same music that the typical American did.

Overall, the pros of being international outweigh the cons by far. You get to meet everyone’s parents on parents weekend without having to worry about entertaining your own parents. You also get to bring food and other cool stuff from back home and share it with your friends. Above all, you stand out. To be honest, that can be a good or a bad thing depending on what you do with it.

If I had any doubt that Carolina was the right place for me, I wouldn’t have made the bold decision to be here. The people I’ve met and continue to meet here make it all the more enjoyable and worthwhile.