Ups and downs
Had I actually been able to write this update last night, my tone would have been completely different. I just spent a good bit of time this morning receiving some constructive feedback from one of my supervisors. It was very difficult to receive for two reasons--first because I have a general difficulty receiving criticism, and second because it seems like my efforts to interact with my colleagues and the children at the projects have not yielded the results I'd hoped they would and thought they had. That's not to say that everything is terrible and nobody likes me, because that's definitely not the case.
Yesterday I was feeling some signs of hope like I might foresee a near future with a decent social life and was feeling pretty good, but then learning that I'm being perceived in some rather negative ways was a pretty big downer today. My initial reaction is to want to pack up and go home (what does "home" mean, anyway?), but I know that I need to wait, calm down and see what I need to change and how I can better adapt. That's one thing that really is difficult about living in another culture is that you are the one who has to do almost 100% of the adapting. Everybody else just goes about their business, but you have to watch every word out of your mouth, every gesture, every greeting or lack thereof, etc.
Earlier, I'd come to realize that whatever small things I might be "accomplishing" here are not the focal point, but, rather, what God is accomplishing within me. I thought that I was presenting the heart of a servant, but apparently my "servant's heart" needs a lot of fine tuning. One thing that came up in the discussion this morning that another friend had mentioned recently was not being so hard on myself. I didn't think that I am that hard on myself, but if it keeps coming up, it must be an issue. More fodder for endless self-analysis...
One big blessing in all of this was when I arrived belatedly in the kitchen to get some lunch, and the women there noticed my puffy eyes and asked if I was sick. I explained that I had been crying because of receiving some criticism, and then when I was eating, one of them began to read the Upper Room devotional for today about past mistakes, which I'd already read while eating breakfast but seemed to hold a special significance now.
Enough of the therapy and onto the usual observations.
One cool thing is that I pass a bakery on my way to the bus stop most mornings, and I was looking for Italian or French style bread to make my sandwiches. I talked to the owner, and she said she had a recipe for Italian bread, so she made some for me a few days later. It turned out to be ciabatta, which was great for my sandwiches. She actually wrote down my cell phone number and is now calling me whenever she makes some so I can go by and pick some up.
Junk mail here isn't delivered by the mailman, but rather in person by individuals hired by the respective businesses who are advertising. They walk around with stacks of flyers and put them into the mailboxes.
As someone who is lactose intolerant, I'm surprised and thankful about how easy it is to find soy milk here. Even the smaller grocery stores seem to carry it.
I see so many people smoking here that it seems like non-smokers are the minority. By law, cigaratte packs and display racks have ghastly pictures of various medical conditions caused by smoking (premature infants, mouth cancer, etc.), but the cheap price of cigarettes (US$1 for a pack of 20!) keeps them coming back. I'm guessing that the medical community here hasn't yet sued the tobacco companies to get them to help pay for the medical care necessitated by people consuming their products.
Last week I was looking for a used travel guide as a present for my former roommate's birthday (a new one would cost about 1/4 of my monthly rent) and called around several used bookstores to find something; the only option was a 1995 guide to Rome. I went to pick it up, and imagine my surprise when I arrived at a long, narrow store that has a counter all the way across the front to keep the customers away from most of the books. You tell one of the employees what you're looking for, and they go digging around and come back to you with whatever they find. I finally got the guy to let me in to browse through whatever few novels they had in English--nothing worth buying, though. I thought that the point of bookstores (especially used ones) was to browse.
Words that don't mean what you'd expect
You run across several seemingly familiar words that mean something completely different from their English meaning. For example:
"colegio" - college? no, primary/secondary school
"academia" - academy? no, gym (the place you go to exercise)
"pretender" - pretend? no, intend
I thought that "inflamavel" in Portuguese meaning "can be burned" was strange, but when looking up how to spell inflammable in English, I just found out that both "flammable" and "inflammable" mean "can be burned" in English. Who knew?
Irony of the Week
Well there are a couple to choose from...
First is the "Open English School" in the Sao Gabriel neighborhood which I don't think I have ever seen actually open. I've also noticed that even deaf Brazilians "talk" all at the same time in sign language.
Pictures
On last Wednesday, I went with my supervisors and three visitors to the "Salão do Encontro" or "Meeting Hall" project in nearby Betim. Originally founded in 1970 with the goal of preserving cultural traditions and folklore, it has expanded to a huge social project in a forest-like setting with training (and selling products) for adults and children in woodworking, pottery, weaving, dried flower arrangments, basketweaving and rag dolls; a school; a day care center; and much more. Here are a few pictures from our visit to the project.
The kids learn make the paint they use from various clays. These kids were taking their jobs very seriously.
Step 2 in the paint-making.
Using the paint
Learning to weave together
Two dreamers--missionary Gordon (one of my supervisors) and Dona Noemi (one of the founders of the project)
Yesterday I was feeling some signs of hope like I might foresee a near future with a decent social life and was feeling pretty good, but then learning that I'm being perceived in some rather negative ways was a pretty big downer today. My initial reaction is to want to pack up and go home (what does "home" mean, anyway?), but I know that I need to wait, calm down and see what I need to change and how I can better adapt. That's one thing that really is difficult about living in another culture is that you are the one who has to do almost 100% of the adapting. Everybody else just goes about their business, but you have to watch every word out of your mouth, every gesture, every greeting or lack thereof, etc.
Earlier, I'd come to realize that whatever small things I might be "accomplishing" here are not the focal point, but, rather, what God is accomplishing within me. I thought that I was presenting the heart of a servant, but apparently my "servant's heart" needs a lot of fine tuning. One thing that came up in the discussion this morning that another friend had mentioned recently was not being so hard on myself. I didn't think that I am that hard on myself, but if it keeps coming up, it must be an issue. More fodder for endless self-analysis...
One big blessing in all of this was when I arrived belatedly in the kitchen to get some lunch, and the women there noticed my puffy eyes and asked if I was sick. I explained that I had been crying because of receiving some criticism, and then when I was eating, one of them began to read the Upper Room devotional for today about past mistakes, which I'd already read while eating breakfast but seemed to hold a special significance now.
Enough of the therapy and onto the usual observations.
One cool thing is that I pass a bakery on my way to the bus stop most mornings, and I was looking for Italian or French style bread to make my sandwiches. I talked to the owner, and she said she had a recipe for Italian bread, so she made some for me a few days later. It turned out to be ciabatta, which was great for my sandwiches. She actually wrote down my cell phone number and is now calling me whenever she makes some so I can go by and pick some up.
Junk mail here isn't delivered by the mailman, but rather in person by individuals hired by the respective businesses who are advertising. They walk around with stacks of flyers and put them into the mailboxes.
As someone who is lactose intolerant, I'm surprised and thankful about how easy it is to find soy milk here. Even the smaller grocery stores seem to carry it.
I see so many people smoking here that it seems like non-smokers are the minority. By law, cigaratte packs and display racks have ghastly pictures of various medical conditions caused by smoking (premature infants, mouth cancer, etc.), but the cheap price of cigarettes (US$1 for a pack of 20!) keeps them coming back. I'm guessing that the medical community here hasn't yet sued the tobacco companies to get them to help pay for the medical care necessitated by people consuming their products.
Last week I was looking for a used travel guide as a present for my former roommate's birthday (a new one would cost about 1/4 of my monthly rent) and called around several used bookstores to find something; the only option was a 1995 guide to Rome. I went to pick it up, and imagine my surprise when I arrived at a long, narrow store that has a counter all the way across the front to keep the customers away from most of the books. You tell one of the employees what you're looking for, and they go digging around and come back to you with whatever they find. I finally got the guy to let me in to browse through whatever few novels they had in English--nothing worth buying, though. I thought that the point of bookstores (especially used ones) was to browse.
Words that don't mean what you'd expect
You run across several seemingly familiar words that mean something completely different from their English meaning. For example:
"colegio" - college? no, primary/secondary school
"academia" - academy? no, gym (the place you go to exercise)
"pretender" - pretend? no, intend
I thought that "inflamavel" in Portuguese meaning "can be burned" was strange, but when looking up how to spell inflammable in English, I just found out that both "flammable" and "inflammable" mean "can be burned" in English. Who knew?
Irony of the Week
Well there are a couple to choose from...
First is the "Open English School" in the Sao Gabriel neighborhood which I don't think I have ever seen actually open. I've also noticed that even deaf Brazilians "talk" all at the same time in sign language.
Pictures
On last Wednesday, I went with my supervisors and three visitors to the "Salão do Encontro" or "Meeting Hall" project in nearby Betim. Originally founded in 1970 with the goal of preserving cultural traditions and folklore, it has expanded to a huge social project in a forest-like setting with training (and selling products) for adults and children in woodworking, pottery, weaving, dried flower arrangments, basketweaving and rag dolls; a school; a day care center; and much more. Here are a few pictures from our visit to the project.
The kids learn make the paint they use from various clays. These kids were taking their jobs very seriously.
Step 2 in the paint-making.
Using the paint
Learning to weave together
Two dreamers--missionary Gordon (one of my supervisors) and Dona Noemi (one of the founders of the project)
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