Godwin Sikanku used to walk outside to the spice-laden aromas of palm-nut soup, potato-like fufu and seafood wafting toward him from kiosks on the street.

He’s been in the United States for more than two months, but Sikanku, graduate student in community and regional planning, still misses the food of Ghana, his homeland. It’s the spicy nature of it he misses, he said. The meals are also more substantial.

“Most of the [Ghanian] food is heavy,” he said. “You can eat a single meal and you don’t have to eat all day.”

It’s one thing to move away from the comfort of mom’s home cooking to buffet-style dorm dining, but it’s quite another to adjust to a cultural landscape where chains such as McDonald’s elicit a familiar nod, but the staples and seasonings of home are gone.

For international students, the adjustment is as individual as the person – some don’t mind it, others relish American specialties and others find the challenge of eating in a foreign land a significant memory in the collection they will bring home.

“I was lucky because my professor is Ghanian, and he invited me over for dinner,” Sikanku said.

The professor’s wife, also from Ghana, prepared the meal.

“It was a beautiful coincidence,” Sikanku said.

The longing for familiar favorites is strong, but Sikanku said he’s always up for trying new foods, too.

“It’s wonderful discovering that you like it,” he said.

In Ghana, eating is only one aspect of mealtimes. Sikanku said he thinks people spend more time cooking in Ghana, because they’re always expecting someone to visit.

“Anytime you cook you just think of getting someone [to come] around,” he said.

That importance of sharing a meal together also seems to be more pronounced in China, said Wang Zong Guang, a visitor to Ames.

“I think people in China spend more time and are more concentrated on food,” he said.

Wang said, on special occasions, a family might even spend up to two days preparing food for guests.

“Guests are very important to [families],” he said.

Wang said he misses the food at home very much, and has done a lot of cooking since he’s lived here.

“But it’s not as good as what I ate in Beijing,” he said.

Poong Oh, graduate student in journalism and mass communication, is from South Korea. He misses some things, like the Korean kimchi, a very hot, spicy side dish.

“American food is not spicy,” Oh said.

For the most part, however, he has no problem eating here.

“Most of the American food I like,” he said. Two favorites are beefsteak and pizza.

“Especially pepperoni. But that makes me fat, right?” he said.

Oh said young Korean people generally enjoy eating foods such as steak and Italian-American crossovers such as pizza and spaghetti in American restaurants.

As far as the social component goes, Oh said the type of environment a person lives in determines the level of socializing.

The United States and South Korea don’t differ so much in that regard.

“It’s hard to say which country is more social,” he said. “In urban areas [in Korea], it’s common to eat alone, or two people have a meal. But in rural areas families get together and eat and it’s more social.”

Oh said he didn’t know how much time Korean students usually spent making food, but he doesn’t think it’s more than the time American students spend.

Aakriti Chaudhari, graduate student in community and regional planning from India, said it’s the lifestyle of the individual that determines how much time is spent preparing a meal.

“More than the nationality, it’s what you do in the daytime that makes the difference,” she said.

Chaudhari’s choice to be a vegetarian, her busy schedule and budget has made her a regular consumer of college cuisine’s old faithful – ramen noodles.

She said she knew American food wouldn’t be vegetarian before she came here, but she thought there would be some more options without meat.

For example, Chaudhari doesn’t eat fast food, but she did notice that in America, beef hamburgers dominate the menu at McDonald’s. It isn’t like that at home.

“There is no beef because Indians don’t eat it,” she said. “So you can cross out all the beef items from the American menu.”

Burgers at an Indian McDonald’s are made from foods like potatoes.

“I would say that most people in India eat more vegetarian food than nonvegetarian food in a week,” Chaudhari said.

She’s observed that there seem to be fewer options in general here.

“I think Indian food is more diverse,” Chaudhari said.