{"id":636,"date":"2014-05-28T09:55:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T13:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/?p=636"},"modified":"2021-12-06T19:08:31","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T00:08:31","slug":"it-was-overwhelming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/2014\/05\/28\/it-was-overwhelming\/","title":{"rendered":"It was overwhelming . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A week ago Sunday I went to some wedding festivities. I\u2019ve actually been to multiple weddings since then (it\u2019s been a crazy few weeks), but this one was unique in that the bride was a North American. She met her husband (who is from My Country) at college in NYC, and came out to My Country for a week to get married. I didn\u2019t get a chance to talk to the bride, but I did get to talk to her mom, who came out for the week as well. She said that it was very overwhelming, and I believe it. They got here on Wednesday, and on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, were the central parts of big celebrations with cultural implications that they didn\u2019t understand, surrounded by people whose languages they couldn\u2019t speak. I would have been overwhelmed, too.<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t attend that wedding within my first week here in My Country. By the time I went, I knew what to expect, what to do, when I had choices in what to do and when I didn\u2019t, I knew several people there, I could speak two languages with them, and I thought that it was fun.<\/p>\n

This experience of learning and growing and understanding and adapting is what NTM calls e2. We learn to be relevant in the city, which will allow us to be able to make a difference here as well as better prepare us to be able to adapt to life among an unreached people group in the near future.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve often thought that through this e2 process I\u2019ve gone \u201cfrom weird to weird.\u201d When I first set foot in My Country, I was very weird by their standards. Now I\u2019m not so weird here, but things that I\u2019ve adapted to here will be very weird by US standards. No set times? Dinner at 9 or 10 at night? You can stop by anyone\u2019s house at any time? There isn\u2019t really a word for \u201cplease?\u201d etc. I actually read an article that it explains it well, so if this update isn\u2019t too long already you can go read it here.<\/p>\n

Since that wedding day of the North American, my e2 coordinator has been out here and met with people here to see how they think that I\u2019ve done in e2. And they said that I have learned to integrate into life here, so I officially \u201cpassed\u201d e2! It doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m done learning and growing, but it does mean that that isn\u2019t my \u201cfull-time job\u201d anymore.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s next? It\u2019s a good question with perhaps a long answer. I\u2019ll keep it brief by saying that I\u2019ll be kept plenty busy with PGA (People Group Assessment) and linguistics \u201cstuff,\u201d most of it on my computer for now. But there is exciting news . . .<\/p>\n

From July through September I\u2019m planning on coming back to Wisconsin for a visit! Since I\u2019m in this interim stage, and actually a lot of my work can now be done from anywhere, I thought it would be a great time to come back and visit some of you while I continue to work on my PGA and linguistics \u201cstuff.\u201d Hooray! Then I can tell you more about what I\u2019m thinking for the future and where I may be heading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week ago Sunday I went to some wedding festivities. I\u2019ve actually been to multiple weddings since then (it\u2019s been a crazy few weeks), but this one was unique in that the bride was a North American. She met her husband (who is from My Country) at college in NYC, and came out to My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":945,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/945"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}