When living abroad, most people experience a common roller-coaster of emotions. Scholars and academics have even graphed it and named it the “Cross Cultural Adjustment Cycle.”
Cultural Adjustment Curve – borrowed from https://studyabroad.colorado.edu/
With the start of Scouts and Youth Red Cross at my school, students and teachers alike are getting pretty busy! Every day is a new learning experience for me. I have had the privilege of leading some games with the students. At first it was easy to get frustrated with myself that something I had done with ease many times before in the U.S. was now complicated by language, culture, and the normal trials and tribulations presented by the middle school student. Read on!
I have now been living in Indonesia and on my Peace Corps adventure for 6 months! I can’t even believe it. This post is long and a little different from my normal posts, but in it I try to capture some of my inward journey, because travel, indeed, takes us both outward and inward. If you make it through to the end, I would love to hear what you think. Share your thoughts in the comment box below! And, as always, thanks for reading and for tagging along on my journey – it really means the world to me! Happy Reading.
During Peace Corps training we were given a variety of manuals: a health manual, an emergency manual, a general manual of PC policies. And on top of the manuals were hand outs and outlines and electronic resources – all to help us navigate our Peace Corps experience.
I like manuals because they tell you what to do and how to do it. They give you guidelines and rules and diagrams. A good manual is simple and straightforward, you follow step one to step two to step three, etc. until you reach the desired outcome. The presence of a manual means that someone else has done what you are trying to do before and determined those specific steps to be the right way to go about achieving success in your endeavor.
But after six months of living in Indonesia, I have finally accepted the revelation that has been creeping up on me for some time: there is no manual. Read on!
This past weekend my school hosted an overnight “Scout” event to welcome our new seventh graders into the school scouting community. In Indonesian middle schools, Scouts is a required school activity for 7th and 8th graders. Students learn to march, get patches for certain skills, and foster a sense of unified community.
Worth a Journey 