Growing up in Iowa, and living on a farm, one gets a different perspective on life. Everything from politics to cars and which college sports team I should support. All these thoughts are bounced back and forth when you grow up on the farm.

Farm kids at Iowa State have always been a bit different. When we go home, it’s not to a different city. Rather, it’s miles from the nearest city, and we usually have chores to do instead of studying or reading. We tend to enjoy seeing the new models John Deere puts out every year, and we wore the hats before it was cool to do so. We secretly brought our Carhartt overalls to college, too, just in case.

This past holiday break, I spent time cutting wood and cleaning up fence-rows so that come spring, the farmers won’t have difficulty planting and preparing the fields for the season. I helped my dad sort sheep, and I even collected a few eggs and fed the chickens, all the while preparing myself for the adventure of my life — a study abroad trip to Cairo, Egypt.

Besides being Palestinian-American (and consistently mistaken for being Latino), I felt pretty normal in rural Iowa — I grew up on the farm and graduated from a high school with 62 other farm kids. That changed a bit about five years ago when I told my mother I wasn’t going to eat meat anymore.

Yes, I dropped the bomb on my family and friends. The pork our neighbors gave as presents, the lamb that I helped raise, and even the chicken that we once butchered ourselves would go uneaten on my plate.

I became a vegetarian slowly, playing with reasons why and struggling to explain it to anyone who asked. I formulated and spouted various reasons: that eating meat is morally unacceptable, that the transfer of energy within the body is greater when taken directly from the source and many more.

Now, I find myself in Cairo, Egypt with 16 million people who, unlike myself, find meat a delicious food and an honor to serve to their guests. Not only have I experienced culture shock, I’ve found myself even more different here than I was as a Palestinian-American living on a farm in rural America.

Its not that I haven’t experienced Arab culture — I’ve been in this region of the world many times — but Cairo is no ordinary Arab city. As I walk back and forth over the Nile to go to classes and settle into my housing on an island in the middle of the river, the thousands of years of history are impossible to ignore. This city truly never sleeps, and the clash of Western culture and traditional culture is brilliant. It is Arab society on steroids.

As I explore Cairo, I think back to the reasons why some of us choose to be vegetarian. Many of us are idealistic and hope that one day we will see a world free of animal cruelty and watch as fellow humans enjoy foods other than meat. But then I look back on the thousands of years of history in Cairo alone and I see a human race that has embraced the animals as food, friend and foe.

I am in a constant battle with myself as to why I remain a vegetarian. Is it practical to think that the world will stop eating animals? What will we do with the millions that are being bred specifically for human consumption? As the practical argument fails, I remember raising lambs from the first moment they entered the world on my farm in Iowa.

To the cute lambs all over the world, take comfort in the fact that I will continue to consume only meatless foods, which are plentiful here. As an old roommate once said, “Hey, that just leaves more meat for me.”