Some days are better than others
September 7th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »In one of my classes at Moody, we learned about the graph of culture shock. Basically, it is a cycle a typical person goes through when living in a foreign context. You start out in the “honeymoon” stage, where you feel “this place is great!,”(1) then you move suddenly into “This place and people are stupid! Get me out of here!” (2) stage, then into “Ok, I can deal with this I guess” (3) then finally into “I can be pretty comfortable here.” (4) Then the cycle starts over. The stages can all vary in length. For some people the honeymoon stage can be a few minutes (as was always the case with me), or a few months.
No matter how many years a person lives in a foreign culture, usually they will still go through the cycle, but the last stage just lasts a lot longer and the “I hate it here/these people are idiots” stage (if you think I am being extreme/insensitive, you’ve never experienced the culture shock cycle) is shorter.
Now, I’m sure you can guess what stage I am going to write about. The most interesting/entertaining one of course.
Saturday, 12:30am-
“Scully, look at them!”
“All 7 of those babies have tails!”
My sleepy eyelids popped opened. Babies with tails? This was going to be a good episode of the X-Files. Maybe I could stay awake. Then something on the wall under the desk caught my eye. I got up to investigate.
White stems with little white mushroom heads were growing out of the wall.
I officially entered stage 2.
The next day, I decided to take the boys to the park. I debated on how to get there. Anson is too big for the baby carrier now, but he is a very slow and easily distracted walker. I could take a taxi, but I really wanted to walk, so I made the decision to take the stroller (plus I could save 4 bucks). I should have known better. Pushing a stroller in Mexico is very bad for my mental health on a good day. On a bad one, just disastrous.
Walking in Mexico is like walking an obstacle course. Push a stroller, add a three year old tripping along beside you, and it becomes Level 10 difficulty.
I will spare you what I was thinking as I walked along struggling to get the stroller wheels over the broken uneven pavement, stepping in gum, shouting hysterically “watch out for the poop!” every few minutes to Alistair, avoiding the scraggly looking dogs…except to say that I was writing a mental letter to President Obama, pleading with him to invade Mexico. A complete military takeover seemed totally justified for a country committing the crime of having uneven, un-level sidewalks.
We took a taxi home.
But that was not without it’s own hazards to my delicate mental state.
As soon as I shut the car door, the barrage Questions and Obvious Statements started.
“You aren’t from here.”
“Where are you from?”
“Your children are very white.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Do you like Mexico?”
Me, (in my head) “NO! IT SHOULD BE DESTROYED.”
Me, out loud, “Yes.”
We get out finally at the entrance to our street. I hold Anson in one arm and struggle with the stroller in the other and try to get the money out of my pocket at the same time.
The taxi drives away, and our front door is just ahead. I see a neighbor lady and try to avoid her. Too late. She comes up behind me.
“Gueros, gueros, gueros, gueros, gueros…”
I wondered how many times she felt she needed to announce that the white boys were on the street.
She squeezes Anson’s cheeks and touches Alistar’s hair. “Gueros, bien gueros! No sacaron tus ojos verdad? Que triste!
(White boys, very white boys! They didn’t get your blue eyes right? How sad!”
I drop the stroller.
“No, they don’t have blue eyes,” a phrase I have to say a lot.
“Buenas tardes…” And we ease on by, as Alistair starts grunting and jerking angrily at the hand that keeps ruffling his hair.
Yesterday, Adam told me that the screen we were having made to screen off the outside patio with the rest of the house to keep mosquitoes out, had rotted at the carpenters. They had let it sit without finishing it for over a year. That was $350 of wood that we paid for.
Today, I woke up and debated whether or not to get ready to go to the mountains. A girl at church had made plans with me to go up with Adam and the other guys this Tuesday. But I figured she probably wouldn’t show up, despite the plans we made on Sunday.
Sure enough, she didn’t show up.
The workman who is going to fix some of the leaks, phoned us up this morning and said he couldn’t make it. I was more surprised he called than that he wasn’t coming.
Sigh. It’s not all that bad. It really isn’t. It just seems that way sometimes.
It helps to write this. It helps to tell Adam all about it and laugh at it all through my tears as he tells me his own stories.
It helps to hear these words sung:
I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”
For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim,
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.
Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.
And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down
All down at Jesus’ feet.
I check the mushrooms. Though thriving for a day, there just wasn’t enough nutrients in the wall to keep them going. They have shriveled and dried up. *
I move on to stage 3.
*If you are wondering why I didn’t get rid of them when I first found them, it was because I found them so repulsive and horrifying that I couldn’t deal with them.
