Reply #42: Back in my college teaching days, the ordinarily mediocre cafeteria

[Lydia Leftcoast]

turned the kitchen over to the foreign students one night each year.

Instead of tasteless gray glop, the kitchen turned out Malaysian satays, Salvadoran papusas, spicy Caribbean meat and fruit stews, Indonesian corn fritters, and countless other fantastic foods that I can still taste.

The faculty made a point of eating in the dining hall that night. (The other occasion was the Hawaiian students' luau.)

But one such evening, I had just joined some colleagues at a table near the door with a plate full of goodies from around the world, when two students walked in, wearing the standard male college student uniform (at least that year) of sweatpants, a beer T-shirt, and a baseball cap worn sideways.

"Oh, no!" one of them groaned. "International Night!"

"I've got my car," the other said. "Let's go to McDonald's."

They were typical of the majority of that students at that school, who seemed to go out of their way to avoid new experiences, whether it was new foods, new people, non-Top 40 music, non-blockbuster movies, the opportunity to study abroad, or the opportunity to hear famous authors, politicians, social commentators, and humanitarians speak.