As I read a letter I received from the government today notifying me that I am a week from becoming an American citizen, I started to think back to my journey here in this country.

It all started in September of 2004 after getting accepted into grad school in Boston. I had arranged to live with Nabeel, a friend since middle school who had already moved to Boston the year before and Elias, a friend from university who was also accepted into the same Information Systems program at Northeastern.

The taxi driver pulled over in front of a house a couple of minutes away from Davis square. Looking around I was still naively in shock. Could America really look like this? Where are all the skyscrapers we are so used to seeing in movies? Where are all the shops and the taxis and the street noise? My friend once explained to me that most people come here expecting America to either look like New York City, Hollywood, or Texas. To me, it felt a little like I had moved into a village…in Kansas. I knew literally nothing about the area I was moving into except that it was up and coming (today it has way past arrived and is bustling). Still, there was something kind of adorable about how shabby yet quaint it was.

“39 dollars” said the taxi driver.

We reached for our pockets and paid him.

“How about my tip?” he said assertively.

In my head I found this question quite confusing. What tip? His job is to take us from point a to point b. What service am I tipping for? How well he drove? How well he stayed in his lanes? I mean I would understand if he had stopped and given me a foot massage because I looked tired.

“It seems people tip taxis here” I whispered to Elias.

“Give him a couple of dollars” Elias replied.

So I grab two dollars and give it to him. In Lebanon this would have been a good tip back then.

“Cheap Arabs!!!” the driver screams.

Fresh off the boat and terrified, I give him another five dollars and patiently waited for my foot massage which, well, never happened. Joking aside, we never quite understood why tipping was necessary and expected for almost any kind of manual labor here.

I look up and this green house stares me in the face.

Green. I now lived in a green house.

I wasn’t used to seeing that many (or any) colored houses in Lebanon.

This creeky apt with a basement that reminds you of The Exorcist brings back many memories.

Whipped cream: Not once could I remember us buying whipped cream and yet the stuff would just show up in our fridge. Which one of my two roommates was having sweet sexy times with his girlfriend I still don’t know.

The first person I ever came out to: Vinny was a gay Asian American Harvard lawyer  whose room I was taking over. We had three days overlap in our lease while I moved in and he moved out. It was my first day in America and he kindly took me out around the park and to the square. We talked about being gay in America and it surprised me how open he was about it all. Although gay marriage was not legal at the time and being gay was a bigger deal than it is now, America was still light years ahead of Lebanon in terms of gay rights and the ability to be openly gay. This was an American quality I learned to appreciate more and more over my years here. You can truly be who you are here, celebrate it, and most of the time not have to worry about being judged, because if you are, it’s being done silently and politely. And that’s totally ok with me. Vinny and I bought some sake and drank the night away while the others slept. And there it was, that moment when I felt comfortable enough to tell this random person that I was gay. But I had to tell him not to tell Nabeel and Elias. While these guys are like my brothers today, at the time I wasn’t ready yet.

The next morning I woke up to a sober Vinny doing  pushups shirtless on the living room coffee table. Strangely hot and disgusting at the same time, I wondered “Who does that??” Another funny moment was when Elias came out trotting in his underwear. Little did he know…

Nabeel’s driving: Every once in a while you look out the window and see a huge American car zooming way past the speed limit….in reverse! That was Nabeel and this was one of his trademark moves. Another signature move was pretending there was never a car behind him when parallel parking. The good news for society is that Nabeel now lives in London and commutes by train.

Winning Eleven, sleeping at ungodly hours, and the heat: It’s hard to forget the look on Nabeel’s face as he said good night to Elias and I playing winning eleven, an Xbox soccer game, only to wake up 5 or 6 hours later for work and see us still playing. If there was ever a FML look, that was it. It was same look I got every time I waited till the dishes hit the ceiling before doing them, and the same look when I changed the temperature up in the house. I liked it tropical and Nabeel liked it cool. So we took turns turning the heat up and down, but I had the final say most of the time since I slept so late 🙂

And now…

12 years, 7 apartments, and 4 jobs later I am summarizing what America is like and what it means to me personally to be Bostonian/American. Warning, tons of cliches and generalizations ahead and things will vary from city to city and coast to coast. I still try to convince myself that there is nothing and nobody in between the coasts 😉

Visa free travel: I promise the next ones will be more serious but I just can’t help it. No more filling out visa paperwork, yeah! 160 countries or so do not require visas.

Kind/Honest people: I’ll never forget that even when the train driver would open up all the doors to signify that the ride is free, some people still insisted on paying because it was the right thing to do. The people are friendly and kind and polite and generally try their best not to offend you in any way. And they rarely try to cheat you, especially in comparison with countries like mine where you always have to be aware of scams by dishonest people.

Individualism: Individualism is also about expressing who and what you truly are even if that means not conforming to convention.  In some places this is frowned upon. Here, it is cherished.

Here’s an example of how things are different from a collectivist Lebanon. Let’s say you’re gay. In Lebanon, you are aware that this is something that the society can’t tolerate – so you suck it up and stay in the closet all so that you can “fit in” and sustain social harmony. Individualism looks at it differently. It’s your life, your choices, and you will do whatever you want to do that makes you personally happy, even if you end up not fitting in.

Coming from Lebanon, this was a nice change, but my ideal is the sweet sport right in the middle between the two extremes.

It’s huge: Whatever you value and whatever your  personality or lifestyle, it is likely that you will find a city that suits you in America. Here is what I call the “currency” of some major cities that explains what they are generally about:

Boston -> Education
New York -> Diversity
Washington DC -> Power
Miami -> Looks
San Francisco -> Technology
Los Angeles -> Fame

And if you’re outdoorsy, there are tons of lovely places to go from Colorado to New Hampshire to Florida, to Alaska, and Hawaii.

Opportunity: While inequality is becoming an issue in America with the top 10% of the people controlling 75% of the wealth, there is still much greater opportunity than many of the places I’ve been to. If you’re willing to work hard, you will live a decent life. As my grandma once put it:

Justice: Say what you want about how convoluted laws are or how much money lawyers can cost you, the system for the most part works and the law prevails.

Productivity: America is filled with stressed out workaholics. I’ll never forget how far my jaw dropped when my coworker told me that he plans to build a garage during his vacation.

Mediocre food: Sure you have cities with delicious American restaurants and specialties, but as a whole, the food is too fattening, too unbalanced, the portions too huge, and way too much emphasis is placed over practicality and cost over quality and taste. The trend is clearly changing to healthier and more tasty food – that I can say for sure.

Corporations are in control: Money talks everywhere in the world, but money talks on a loud speakerphone in America. The corporations control the media which in turn control every trend you can imagine from what you should be eating to how you should live your life. Corporations can even donate money to politicians.

Diversity: I remember how once our history professor talked about a boiling soup pot with many different vegetables in it. This is America he said. And yes, you can certainly find all sorts of people here. Having only lived in Boston I can say the people here are respectful towards the various ethnic groups.  The majority understand that this is a nation of immigrants who came in search of opportunity and to escape persecution (yes, I studied!).

But that’s not to say there aren’t people in this country who want to build walls to keep Mexicans out. And on that note about the neo nazi, toupee wearing, stupidity spewing, orangutan caricature of a human being, Donald trump, I look forward to the oath ceremony, citizenship, and making sure he gets one less vote!