The stages of culture shock appear to be immutable. Or maybe God just has particular plans for me/us in this particular semester arrangement. I blogged earlier about worrying all summer about the visa situation, and having it go just about as smoothly as one could imagine when it came right down to it. My new worries have to do with other details of our semester program that I won't go into detail about tonight, but suffice to say that there are things that you can talk about across language and cultures, and things that you cannot. Or that there are things that are much much more difficult to talk about than others when language and culture are in play. These are some of the hardest lessons in crossing cultures, it seems to me. Not being able to either understand normally, or be understood normally - both of these are very difficult. And they describe well the way I've felt during much of the daytime hours this week. Our time here "pre-students" is coming to a close, and this is a very good thing. Our rhythms as a family, and my rhythm professionally, have been almost non-existent, and this makes for all kinds of potential for time poorly spent, or unplanned time, or "lost" time, or what have you. In many ways, it has been a highly productive time - lots of meetings, conversations, discoveries in the city, words learned, abilities gained etc... - but it has also been a time of waiting, mostly waiting for the Calvin students to arrive and get settled. And waiting for the kids to find a routine, and to meet other kids, and waiting for a greater knowledge of our local environment, and the ways to do the normal things of life. Today Julie and I spent several hours developing an activity for the students to participate in that will serve as a sort of city-wide scavenger hunt during the first week, and hopefully will provide an orienting overview to the city and the many ways to navigate it. A full-access monthly transportation pass allows one to ride buses, trams, subways - all over the city, and the trick is to learn which form of transportation makes the most sense considering where you are starting, and where you want to end up. The other trick is figuring this out when Hungarian is the language in which everything is explained. We learned this morning that our Hungarian teacher is thrilled that we are here earlier than usual, and has planned to provide a good chunk of our total number of lessons during the first week, beginning Monday, enabling us to learn the many different sounds and pronunciations of the language as quickly as possible. Sounds like a bonding experience to me. And tiring, but useful.
So as I've wrestled with the reality of an anxious mind and heart, I was struck today by the realization that it is probably better for me to be worried than to assume that there will be no problems along the way - I am expecting the unexpected - following the first rule of study abroad, which is to "be flexible." Jumping into situations like this, where there is inherent risk that all will not go as planned, or turn out perfectly, is how we grow. Here's to growth.
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