When someone asks where I'm from, it takes me a good 10 seconds before I can explain it in the most convenient way. I'm Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, but I lived in Saudi Arabia until I somehow ended up in Chico.
I knew I would experience culture shock when I came to the U.S., and I have learned to deal with it in my three years here - but what about sports culture shock?
Back home in the Middle East, only fathers who are 50 years or older will watch the NBA or NFL, and that only happens on rare occasions or as an excuse to get some alone time away from the family. Baseball is not even considered a sport - no offense to the great American pastime.
Soccer is what it's all about but never the Saudi or Jordanian leagues, which are basically a joke.
We love the good stuff, the European leagues with their crazy fans chanting cheers that we have memorized in whatever language it may be. Every four years, we count down the months before the World Cup, the most challenging international event.
When I came here, I reported on my first American sport, basketball.
The game is played in 20-minute halves, but yet it took two hours. There were too many timeouts, too much planning and too much dependency on the coaches, and the clock stopped every minute. I bet no one would expect to hear that I think basketball is a slow sport.
When I was watching the game, I got pumped up, but a couple of minutes into it, I calmed back down. After a few cycles of this, my adrenaline got disappointed and failed to rise again.
If you're going to sit me down for two hours, at least keep me interested. I even wonder if eliminating all the pauses in basketball would be an option.
In soccer, when a game gets intense, there are no timeouts or clock-stops to break the excitement. Players are spontaneous and take risks. You wonder why their fans are over-the-top insane.
My first baseball game, however, was a treat. But do you really need nine innings of the same pattern?
Each batter takes at least five minutes before he actually gets a hit - if at all. The most action-packed moment came from the only home run I've ever seen. It made me go, "Cool, that was a solid hit," but then I got over it.
While studying abroad in Italy last year, I had a conversation with a man on a train who told me that all the problems in the world would be solved if we could put two children from different countries on a patch of grass with a soccer ball in front of them.
I guess that's why I love my calico - the Italian word for soccer - because it represents a passion for people all over the globe, and I'm all about being international.
Did I mention I have some Egyptian blood, too?
Maybe by the time I leave the U.S. in June, I will have added a new culture to my world of sports, something they won't quite understand back home.
Maybe even one day, you'll find me at a baseball game somewhere - completely voluntarily.
Ban Barkawi can be reached at bbarkawi@theorion.com
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