Spring 2007 - Arrived, but not entirely here

MRANDMRSCHINAJIM JOURNAL SIX

Chinajim gives the facts:

We’ve finally arrived! Here we are, in our field country at last, slowly settling in.

Due to delayed flights, we arrived here from Thailand at 4 o’clock in the morning! We arrived in the dark at the flat which will be our home for the next few years. The next day, we were able to begin the task of cleaning it up and equipping it with what we need.

Top of the shopping list were a bathroom sink and a washing machine. Other necessary purchases have included a water filter, a mattress and curtain rails. We’ve never bought these things in the UK before, let alone in Asia where we don’t speak the language! Thankfully our colleagues who are already here had recruited two local students to help us. These ‘buddies’ were our first real friendship in this new culture. One is a Christian and one is not, so from day one we had someone to disciple and someone to witness to. Please pray for them both.

It’s a strange sensation to be immersed in a new culture. All of the sights and smells, food and behaviour is different. Thankfully we didn’t suffer too much initial culture shock, although I did struggle with one of the local festivals where five year old children run around and light firecrackers! We are now bracing ourselves for culture stress (the effect of living in a different culture day in and day out).

We have started to grapple with learning the language here. Every day we have class for three hours each morning. My wife is in a fast-track class for people who don’t like review, while I am in a slow and methodical class. More on the trials and tribulations of language study next time…

China Jane gives the feelings:

I look around our new apartment, expecting to feel amazingly excited about its potential beauty and cosiness, but I just feel exhausted. I’m starting to realise that sorting out things in our new country takes time. Lots of time. We’ve managed to negotiate installation of curtain rails and curtains on two of our four windows so we no longer have to get changed with the lights off. We now have double bedding so I don’t freeze every night while my husband enjoys his normal cosiness in the single duvet. We have a bathroom sink so we don’t have to traipse through to the kitchen several times a day. But there are still no pictures on our huge white bare walls and I’m not quite sure where to go for duvet covers. I’m hoping the one we have won’t start to smell too badly before I find out…

Some things are fun here. Eating food, for example. It’s much cheaper (and easier!) for us to buy a bowl of something tasty at a local restaurant than slave for hours searching for ingredients to prepare a dish we recognise. It’s fun to have an almost unlimited choice for every meal time.

It is difficult that our skin colour marks us out to be followed by many pairs of eyes wherever we go. However, a friend recently pointed out to us that people in this country just have a habit of watching whatever’s going on. It’s not that we’re white, it’s just that they’re a bit bored and prefer the local comings and goings to watching TV. It does mean, though, that as our language improves we’ll have more opportunities for friendship than we’ll ever know what to do with.

Take for example our two local student friends who’re helping us to settle in. They’re not being paid for their work – they take it as free English practice and a privilege to have foreign friends. They’re willing to do anything for us (they waited at the gate of our housing development for over an hour one day for a delivery man to make sure he didn’t get lost). I think these girls may now be our faithful and helpful friends forever. However, it’s taking them a while to get used to our funny ways (they’ve never seen a washing machine the size of the one we made them help us buy) and they still occasionally ask what the climate or educational standards are like in our part of the United States! But they are immensely sweet and I can’t pretend I’m any more used to them than they are to us. They’ve taken to intertwining their fingers with mine whenever we cross the road. Or walk through a crowded place. Or just when they’re feeling happy. Since I was a small child, my fingers have only been that closely embraced by Chinajim’s. Do I swallow my embarrassment and shock, acting as if this behaviour is perfectly normal to me, or do show my true feelings and jerk away as red-faced as if they’d just peeked at my underwear? Ah, the dilemmas of cultural adaptation.

So, all in all, we feel like one day far in the future we might be settled here. For now we’ll keep working on home decoration, language skills, and expecting the culture to throw something bizarre at us at least every week. And we trust our Father that no matter how confused and overwhelmed we may feel here, he is not toying with us. It’s him who brought us here and he doesn’t make mistakes.