Paterson, New Jersey often gets a bad reputation because of its high crime rate, and the immense amount of poverty within the city. However, when visiting Paterson, people fail to mention the strong sense of culture within the city. The area that our intensive visited was South Paterson, sometimes called Little Istanbul because of the large amount of Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants within the area. There was a presence of Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrians, Turkish, Iranian, and Moroccan immigrants who all spread their culture to the area. When we got off the bus, we entered a supermarket. Members of our group bought and tried a Middle Eastern pastry called baklava. After this, we headed to a jewelry store. The entire store had gold products. Because many of the Middle Easterners are Muslims, only gold was sold. In Islam, it’s disrespectful to give any jewelry but gold to someone you love. We two different stores where we were able to try Middle Eastern pastry. Finally when we ate lunch at a restaurant. At the restaurant, we were served Middle Eastern beef and chicken. We also were able to try falafel, an appetizer made of deep-fried chickpeas. The drink that most of our group was able to try was a very sweet drink called limonana. That was the last thing we did on our trip, but it was interesting to see how all the cultural influences shaped the community. Even though many people look down on Paterson, I enjoyed our time there and the experience we had.