Author: trotters41

Why Transition is Terrible, But Having a Sending Agency is Not (Looking Back on a Year in Asia Part 2)

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In light of my first post, in which I explain how much I love life in Cambodia, I felt it necessary (in the interest of honesty, which is, after all, one of my highest values), to talk a little about our first month here.

IT WAS TERRIBLE.

And we even had help. Lots of help:

Help #1: My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to Cambodia one week ahead of us and bought the essentials like beds, washing machine, kitchen appliances. Apparently it was not the purchasing of the beds and refrigerator, but the transporting of them up to the right floors, that was quite the feat. (They may even have this on video.) Bonus: They stocked that fridge and made those beds, and when they were all done with that, they picked us up from the airport.

Help #2:  A different sister-in-law made the 24-hour long international flights with us, our 4 (sometimes motion sick) children, and 16 pieces of checked luggage. Bonus: She stayed for an entire two weeks to do whatever we crazed parents needed her to do, like, say, wash the dishes, or watch the children. This was not overkill, as I initially expected it to be. When Mommy got holed-up-in-the-bathroom-sick, she was there. When Mommy was camped-out-on-the-couch-wanting-to-die (that’s not a joke), she was there. Her and her Angry Birds game.

Help #3: When I was brand new to the country and didn’t know how to cook or grocery shop, three different families brought us meals.

That first month was the worst month of my life by far – and that is no exaggeration. Our luggage got stuck in Seoul, South Korea, and didn’t land in Cambodia with us. It didn’t arrive until midnight the next day, leaving us without such luxuries as diapers, shampoo, clean clothes, and tooth brushes for yet another 24 hour-period. (If any of you know my obsession with careful attention to clean teeth, you understand what a hardship that was.) I think I had brought some deodorant in my carryon. Oh yeah. I was real prepared for missionary life.

familyonporch

Fresh off the plane and smack dab in the middle of Transition.

Note the missing shirts, proof of our lost luggage.

Mosquitos ate us alive. Hannah and Faith were jet-lagged. We were jet-lagged. Jonathan had to drive that very first day in country (remember the lost luggage??). As a newbie driver, he got pulled over by police four times that first month — twice on the first day. Such a wonderful welcome to the country, don’t ya think??

One meal was just . . . rice. Another was eaten in the haze of burnt French toast. The plastic-y cheese on those first grilled cheese sandwiches never did melt. Even our kids have bad memories of those days.

I didn’t have any privacy — we didn’t have curtains in the bedroom yet. We didn’t have padding or carpeting for stair safety, and the gates hadn’t been installed yet. (Everything is concrete here, and the stairs are majorly steep. My Harm Avoidance had kicked into Overdrive.) And I couldn’t for the life of me convince the hot water heater to produce hot water, no matter how many exasperated sighs I let out. (My husband, on the other hand, had no such issues with the water. He did, however, find the nightly sighing sessions quite humorous.)

We didn’t know where to buy anything, and we didn’t know the language to negotiate a reasonable price if we had.

And everywhere we went, Cambodians touched my kids. They hated that.

My feet ached from walking barefoot on the concrete floors.

I was so hot. And we came in cool season.

Everything was so dirty.

And I was so miserable.

While Help #2 watched the children, I lay on the couch and wanted to die. Jonathan cried. That’s very characteristic behavior for us, by the way. Under the influence of stress, I shut down; he cries. (He tells me this is the Trotter Way, and he is ok with it now.)

We sent out a desperate “please pray for us” email. (Thank you for praying! We felt all your prayers from the beginning and continuing throughout this past year.)

Then one day, three weeks in, I got curtains in my windows. Privacy! Yay! My stress levels went down by 50%. That was the day I decided I could live in this place. (“They” say transition ends when you make the internal decision to settle in the new place.)

Then a week later, gates were installed on the stairs. Now I didn’t have to follow my toddler around every.waking.minute. My stress levels went down by another 50%. If you’re calculating correctly, I was now functioning at 25% of the first week’s stress — although it’s debatable whether lying on the couch wanting to die counts as “functioning.” That 25% slowly but steadily dropped to pre-flight levels over the next couple months. (Sporadically, levels do pop back up, but only temporarily.)

That first month is what we call Transition — the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad period of physical, emotional, and spiritual Chaos. (To read actual journal entries from that time, click here.)

I’d like to take a moment here, to say, that without the training and support we received from Team Expansion, we’d probably still be drowning. We use the material from Team Expansion’s required training multiple times a week. Our sending church’s elders also requested that we attend a week of intensive marriage counseling before leaving the States, and we use that material nearly every day as well.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Transition is Terrible. Sending Agencies are Amazing.

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Post Script:

While my first month overseas was by far the hardest month of my life, it does not follow that my first year overseas was the hardest year of my life. That distinction belongs to 2008. I do not merely speak for myself in this; Jonathan agrees. That was the year he began work as a first-year nurse in Truman Medical Center’s Emergency Department, while continuing to work part time at Red Bridge Church of Christ. He had to work nights and attend extra trainings and was extra tired. I was pregnant with Hannah, endured intense morning sickness, and fought overwhelming fears about health throughout my pregnancy. 2008 definitely beats out 2012 for the Hardest Year Award 🙂

Yays and Yucks (Looking Back on a Year in Asia Part 1)

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— by Elizabeth

NOTE ABOUT THIS SERIES:  I spent a lot of time in December and January reflecting on my first year overseas. Then I wrote it all down. In a 6-part series. Yes, I know that a 6-part series is waaaaay too long, but what am I if not long-winded?? (It could have been worse, you know. I scrapped a few ideas along the way.) My fiancé used to suffer through my jabbering till 2 am nearly every night, despite being in his first year of law school and working 3 jobs on the side. Boy, do I have a lot to say. (Oh yeah, and my fiancé still married me. More evidence of the existence of True Love.)

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I love my life. It’s true. I loved it in Kansas City, and I love it in Phnom Penh.

We learned in missions training about the paradox of yays and yucks — the good things and bad things that happen in life – often at the same time. A friend recently described it as roses and thorns. People make decisions in life after listing out the pros and cons of a particular situation. And then “normal” people take the road that has fewer yucks, right?

Well, if I were to list out all the yays and yucks of living here, my yuck list would be longer. Muuuuch longer. You might question my normalcy. You might question my sanity. And you might question my claim.

So here’s my answer to those questions:

It’s because the weight I assign the yays is much heavier than the weight I assign the yucks. It’s like those weighted percentages in school. How we wish that our grade would depend more on the homework, which usually garners about 10% (sometimes none!). Quizzes are in there somewhere. Maybe a term paper. But the bulk of your grade is based on test scores.

God has granted me some heavy-duty yays this year. He has given us health (by missionary standards anyway). He has given us a sense of home and belonging. He has given me close friends in this country. My marriage is better than ever. (Research has found this is not the norm.) And I have peace in my relationship with God. (To any men who read this, I do apologize that my blessings are heavy on the relationships. But I am, after all, a woman, so what else would you expect??) These blessings are worth more to me than all the language mishaps, cultural isolation, sweat, dirt, bugs, and stinky smells combined. And believe me — there are more bugs and stinky smells than you can possibly imagine.

So in the weighted grade of my life, the yays count like tests, and the yucks count like homework. Go figure.

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 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ. Philippians 3:8

When It Rains Cats and Dogs

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— by Elizabeth

It was my turn to lock the gate for the night. And because I picked that very moment to go, I have this story to tell:

I heard a loud noise overhead as I pulled the gate closed. It was an unfamiliar noise, so I thought to myself, “that must be gunfire.” (Here my inner paranoid reveals itself again. You too can discover your inner paranoid by moving to a different country. Then again, I possessed an inner paranoid in America, and you might too, so on second thought, an international move is not required.) No one else was running away or screaming, though, so I figured I was wrong about the gunfire.

I stood at the threshold looking nervously toward the noise. Suddenly two animals fell off my roof – a roof that’s 15 feet high and made of metal (perhaps explaining the gunfire-esque noises?).  These animals were locked in a fight. I’m afraid of wild animals – oh, let’s be honest, I’m pretty much afraid of all animals. So I did what any normal zoophobic would do: I hid inside my house.

A yellow cat flashed by. I waited a minute longer, just to be sure the other animal wasn’t going to come after me (again, PARANOID). I peeked around the corner of my door, and saw the neighbor’s dog, standing next to him, calm as can be. And all the neighbors were calm, too, as if nothing extraordinary had just happened. But I was like, “A cat and a dog fell out of the sky. That’s not normal!”

Sure, it feels like it rains cats and dogs during Cambodia’s rainy season, but it’s ordinary water. Two hydrogens and an oxygen, bonded together in a delightfully polar compound. It wasn’t rainy season anymore, but cat and dog rained down at my house that night.

Literally.

An American at a Khmer Wedding (Part 3: The Food)

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— by Elizabeth

There is a lot of food at Khmer weddings. Course after course of meat. But I’m not really a meat kind of girl. I’m really a carb kind of girl. Maybe it’s a holdover from my high school days. My formerly eating-disordered-self refused to eat anything but yogurt (the fat-free sugar-free type, yuck) and bagels (everything-bagels anyone?). True story. Just ask my mom, who had to buy all that tasteless yogurt and dozens upon dozens of bagels. Or ask the family I nannied for one summer, who asked me what they should stock their kitchen with (bagels and yogurt, duh).

Or just ask my husband, who knew me way back when I refused to eat hot dogs at our first youth retreat together, instead choosing peanut butter on a hot dog bun. (Can anyone say ick? Peanut butter on hot dog buns? I mean, peanut butter on just about anything is divine, but on hot dog buns? No thanks. Hot dog buns taste like cardboard.) Or ask him about that time when I disdained the consumption of donuts. On Donut Sunday no less. I mean, who doesn’t like donuts? And who makes fun of people who eat donuts, in front of people who are, at that very moment, eating donuts? Um, yes, that would be the formerly eating-disordered me. (And he still married me – evidence of the existence of True Love.)

Then again, my meat aversion could go all the way back to elementary school, when my entirely non-eating-disordered-self discovered that meat was . . . . muscle! (Insert childish gross-out factor and subsequent decades-long meat boycott here.)

Whatever the reason, when it comes to me and meat, I would still just rather pass. At a Khmer wedding, they usually serve 4 or 5 courses of chicken, fish, pork, squid, duck, beef, shrimp (you get the idea) before serving any carbs at all. I figured this out early on, that I have to wait several courses to get to the fried rice that I really want.

There is a catch, of course. The servers don’t bring out the next course until a table has eaten sufficiently enough of the last course. So I eat the broth from all those meat dishes while everyone else eats the meat. Now I really am a broth kind of girl. Remember that breakfast wedding soup? Well, I mostly ate the broth from it too. (And remember that yummy fried bread they serve with the soup? Well, it tastes suspiciously like an unsweetened donut – proof that even donut-haters can change their ways.) Plus, if you only eat the broth, you won’t accidentally eat the congealed pig’s blood that ends up in some curry dishes. Don’t ask me how I know that. Besides, can anyone tell me how to eat meat with only a spoon and two chopsticks for utensils? I haven’t figured it out yet. If you have, then by all means, enlighten me.

At this wedding, though, I finally asked my friend, why do they wait so long to bring out the food I love? I mean, who can stomach all that meat without a single bite of starchy goodness? It’s because rice is so filling, she told me. If they bring it out in the beginning, they would be telling their guests to fill up on rice. It would be sending the message that they’re stingy with the meat, the expensive part of the meal. It reminded me of the Bible story where Jesus turns water into wine, and everyone is so surprised when the hosts bring out the best wine last, because people usually serve the best stuff first.

So it seems that across millennia and across people groups, hosts show their good host-iness by serving the best stuff first. But if you happen to like the worst stuff best, then you just have to wait for the good stuff.

Like me.

An American at a Khmer Wedding (Part 2: A Walk with Fruit)

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— by Elizabeth

We’ve already attended 2 Khmer weddings this year. We learned about how the girls are supposed to dress up fancy and how much money you’re supposed to give the bride and groom (although advice on this varies, and looking back I’m afraid we accidentally erred on the side of giving too little). But we’ve only ever gone to the evening reception part, where you show up late and eat a bunch of food. Both weddings were for acquaintances.

This time my house helper’s son was getting married, so naturally we were more excited (hence the desire for a new dress in my previous post). In addition, we were invited to another part of the wedding – the fruit walk. The fruit walk begins at 6:30 in the morning, when it’s still (relatively) cool.

Remember how in Bible times, the day starts the night before? Well, when you’re talking about getting four kids someplace at 6:30 in the morning, the day most assuredly starts the night before, with an early bedtime. However, if your bedroom harbors a (wo)man-eating mosquito that you can’t quite kill, you might find yourself unable to sleep until well past midnight. That would be due to the insatiable itching and quarter-size swellings. On the other hand, you might be thankful that you brought some Benadryl cream from the States last year.

But I digress.

My point is, 5:30 am comes pretty fast.

After you drag yourself out of bed and slip into your clothes (sans fancy hair and makeup at this point), you drag your children out of bed, and instruct them to slip into their clothes too. You might be a sleepy-looking bunch. But you might not be awake enough to notice that. . .

If your friends call the night before and offer for you to follow them to the wedding, then by all means, accept their offer, because wedding maps in Cambodia are notoriously bad, even if your family boasts an expert map reader. As you arrive at exactly 6:30 am, as instructed, you might hear an announcement over the loud-speaker that the procession will instead start at 7 am.

So you will wait. But waiting is fun. You can look at all the pretty dresses. Seriously. Dress-watching just might become one of your favorite pastimes at Khmer weddings. Do try to keep the other guests from invading your daughters’ personal space, but as always, smile politely while guarding it.

Music is rather loud at a Cambodian wedding, so you might find your daughter looking like this:

fruitwalk

When it’s time to start the fruit walk, you will get in line, and someone will hand you a wrapped platter of fruit. You will follow everyone else about 3 blocks away. If you were given an exceptionally heavy fruit package, and are wearing heels that are capable of aerating the dirt roads you’re walking on, and are carrying the diaper bag and the toddler who was walking too slowly, you just might start to fall behind yourself. And you will be happy no one took a picture of that. But then again you might also be so fortunate as to have your husband send an older child to carry the fruit platter so you can catch up. And you might even be so fortunate as to have him carry the diaper bag and the toddler when you get to where everyone else has gathered.

If you have white skin, you may be given the honor of walking at the front of the procession, just behind the wedding party. You will stand at the front waiting for pictures and video to be taken, and by then you notice the sun’s heat is really starting to increase. Now you understand why the fruit walk must start so crazy early. You will pause to reflect upon the special challenges of bringing your children with you to cultural events. You might start to wonder why you are crazy enough to bring them along in the first place. (And you tell yourself to address that later, in a separate blog.)

You walk back to the wedding tent, where you will be served breakfast — a traditional wedding porridge. It’s a thin, savory rice soup. You will eat that plus these thin little slices of fried bread for dipping. And you might just overdose on those pieces of fried bread. Heavenly. Then you will go home full and happy, and ready to take a nap.