Some people scroll Facebook. Some TikTok. Some Youtube. Some spend their online time on Pinterest or X or Insta or IG or Gram (and I’m going to stop there, before I pull a muscle).
Some people scroll Facebook. Some YouTube. Some TikTok (at least for now). Some spend their online time on Pinterest or X or Insta or IG or Gram—and I’m going to stop there, before I pull a muscle.
If you can’t tell already, I’m not a big consumer of social media, but I do have go-to sites of my own. Most mornings I call up a collection of tabs for local, world, and Church news; sports updates; and several blogs. One site that I check daily is MinistryWatch, which helps readers make informed decisions about giving to Christian charities. A couple of weeks ago, MinistryWatch‘s editor, Warren Cole Smith, wrote about the recent online conversation concerning the drop in the number of American conservatives listening to NPR. He says that his “own experience reflects that change.”
“Part of the reason for these changes,” Smith writes, “is technological. The rise of podcasts means that we have a much wider variety of listening choices than we did even a decade ago. As recently as a few years ago, when I got in my car, I turned on the local NPR affiliate. Today, I plug in my iPhone and listen to a podcast.”
Some people listen to podcasts . . . but not me, at least not often. I have listened to season one of Serial (on NPR, oh, the irony) and The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, but that’s mostly it. I don’t have an iPhone and my 2006 Honda CR-V doesn’t speak Bluetooth.
I know that many of you are fans of podcasts, though. So I’d like your help in crowdsourcing a list of them for your fellow ALO readers. What do you listen to? What podcasts do you tune in to to get your cross-cultural-worker information, insights, or inspiration? Maybe you host a podcast yourself. Let us know. Also, what podcasts not specifically in the cross-cultural-worker orbit do you follow—ones that tangentially speak into the CCW mindset and experience?
There seems to be an awful lot of Perfect! going on these days, at least in my part of the world. I told my server at a restaurant that I wanted fries and steamed broccoli to go with my entree. “Perfect!” he said. A nurse read off my blood pressure. “Perfect!” again. When I offered 8:30 as a possible time for an appointment, I heard “Perfect!” over the phone.
And then I was at a hotel not long ago and saw an advertisement for “Perfect Pizza.” I really, really wanted to run up to the hostess and yell, Elf-style, “You did it! Congratulations! The perfect pizza! Great job everybody! It’s great to meet you!”
I know it’s just a trendy shorthand for “good” or “fine” or “sounds OK to me,” but Perfect! sure bumps things up a notch. It sounds so comforting, so . . . exciting. And while it’s not my go-to expression (“Great!” is my over-the-top adjective of choice), I still see myself hoping for perfection, and wanting to claim it when I think I’ve found it.
For instance, “Please, Lord, bless us with just the right apartment, in just the right quiet neighborhood, with just the right opportunities for outreach, with just the right distance from the preschool and bus stop, and just the right rent for our budget” is like something I might have prayed while we were looking for a new place to live overseas. And when we’d found a new home that checked all the boxes, we’d declare it a Perfect! fit and would tell our supporters as much in our next newsletter.
A Perfect! fit.
Pardon the detour, but have you heard of “wire electrical discharge machining”? . . .
I’ve heard it’s the holy grail of fluency: dreaming in your target language—walking around in your dream world, saying whatever you want to say and understanding everything that’s said. Sounds pretty cool.
Has that ever happened to me? Nope. I do sometimes dream that I’m back in Taiwan, but the people around me tend to say a lot of nonsense words, and when I open my mouth, I can only say the most basic of sentences. Sometimes I’m lost in the city, late for a meeting. I can’t remember the address of where I’m headed, can’t find the subway station, and have no money for a cab. It’s the cross-cultural equivalent of dreaming that I’m standing in my high school’s hallway, finding out I have a test I haven’t studied for and not knowing my locker combination. Oh yeah, and when I look down I’m not wearing pants. I think my dreams have found me pantsless on the streets of Taiwan a few times, too.
Or what about daydreaming about complete fluency, gleefully imagining the moment you take your seat as a translator for the UN? That, too, is a nope for me.
If your dreams are filled with fluent encounters in a second (or third or fourth) language, if language learning is your forte, if it’s as easy as ah, bay, tsay, or if it’s simply a piece of gâteau, this post probably isn’t for you.
But if your language learning has been a struggle, if you’re disappointed in your progress, or if you’ve reached a wall with no door in sight, read on . . . at A Life Overseas.
The traveller sees what he sees; the tripper sees what he has come to see. —G. K. Chesterton (Autobiography)
G. K. Chesterton, the turn-of-the-20th-century English author, journalist, and Christian apologist, first came to my attention through quotations on travel taken from his writings. Along with the one above, there’s also
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land. (—Tremendous Trifles)
and
They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind. (—said by the character Gabriel Gale in “The Shadow and the Shark”)
While these aphorisms apply to travelers and “trippers,” they also are relevant to movers and shakers, those who relocate to other countries and cultures in order to make a difference there. In that vein, I’ve recently found another idea from Chesterton—often referred to as “Chesterton’s fence”—that can relate to the life of cross-cultural workers. Before explaining it, here’s a little background.
Chesterton, born in 1874, was well known in his day as an influential defender and explainer of the Christian faith. C. S. Lewis, a major Christian apologist in his own right, credits Chesterton for impacting his conversion from atheism. In his memoir, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, Lewis writes that in reading Chesterton’s Everlasting Man, he “for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense.” And the prolific Christian author Philip Yancey writes that if he were stranded on a desert island and could have “only one book, apart from the Bible, I may well select Chesterton’s own spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy.”
Chesterton began his faith as an Anglican, later converting to Roman Catholicism, with this conversion being the subject of his book The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic. It’s in this work that we find Chesterton’s fence. That concept in a nutshell is this:
When you come across something that you think needs to be changed, you should first find out why it is the way it is. Only after understanding why it came to be can you then follow through with the change.
Not long after we landed in Taipei in 2001, the head of our church’s missions-ministry team asked about our first impressions. Here’s what we sent to him:
people-people-people, stinky tofu, cell phones, smog, construction, dogs, Hello Kitty, noise, taxis, temples, night markets, McDonald’s, squatty potties, ATMs, squid on a stick, scooters, 7-11s, people-people-people
McDonald’s, an icon of American culture, played a big part in our time overseas, whether a familiar place for meeting with friends, a safe(ish) place to practice our Mandarin, or a dependable place for getting a meal. It was also a place for learning—or reinforcing—some valuable lessons. Here are some of them:
Language Acquisition Is as Easy as 1, 2, 3
Before moving abroad, as a family of six we’d become adept at saving money at McDonald’s using our savvy ordering skills: building our own meals out of single hamburgers or fish sandwiches, small fries, and waters. All that went out the window in our new home. Since we didn’t have the vocabulary for separate items, we just ordered by number, which meant each of us got a full meal, even our four year old (I guess we couldn’t say “Happy Meal” either). Ease of ordering trumped frugality. Bring on the giant cups of Coke.
Pride Goeth before the Spill
Most of the McDonald’s in Taiwan are multilevel, so after getting your food, you can then walk upstairs to eat. One day we were on a trip and stopped at McDonald’s and ordered our regular six number ones (or twos, or whatevers). That meant six burgers, six orders of fries, and six sodas. I was nervously carrying all the sodas on a tray up two (or was it 10?) flights of stairs, with extreme care. Then as I got to my family, I mimicked being out of breath and struggling to make it to the table. And of course, my theatrics made all the cups tip . . . and fall over . . . and hit the floor. I’m pretty sure it was all in slow motion. So I had to trudge back downstairs and try to explain what happened, using my book-one, chapter-five-or-so language skills, along with some extremely clever hand signals.
It’s the Little Things
I guess Coke at McDonald’s has given me a lot of memories, but not all of them were bad. . . .
I got several responses to my post last month, “Photographers, Can You Do Us Cross-Cultural Bloggers a Favor?” One of my favorites is “We are debating whether your plea for more photos is an actual plea for more photos or if it was written with sarcasm in mind.”
I replied, “I’ll admit I wrote the post tongue in cheek. I was wanting to point out my own tendencies in photo selection as much as anyone else’s. But on the other hand, I meant it when I said we need more and better photos, so I’m happy that people are asking how they can contribute to the cause. I think it’s great that people with photographic skills are looking for ways to use their talents and creativity for A Life Overseas, and we’re brainstorming ways to help make that happen.”
Well, our brainstorming has led to a solution—a place for storing your pics (in Flickr) where they’ll be available to authors at A Life Overseas but not accessible by others.
So consider this an unambiguous plea: If you’d like to share your photos with us, please send them to alifeoverseasblog@gmail.com. (A maximum width/height of 1000 pixels should do.) By submitting your pics, you’re giving ALO writers permission to use them, but you’ll retain your copyright, and we’ll credit you when your photos appear. If you’d like, label your pics with any important information, and make sure you’re not sending us any images that shouldn’t be posted in public spaces.
Thanks to those who’ve already sent pics our way, to those who’ve asked about next steps, to those who’ve already taken photographs inspired by my suggestions, and to those who will continue to add to the collection. Thinking about all that makes me happy.
When I wrote my post, I wanted to think I could bring smiles to some faces. Your response is bringing a much bigger smile to mine.
From a recent edition of the weekly web journal Brigada Today, I found out that there’s a photography conference, “Depth of Field,” coming up, February 7 and 8. It’s designed for pro photographers, but I’m thinking that means amateurs could learn even more from it. And it’s in New York, but the “Main Stage” and “Exposure Stage” presentations will be live streamed. (By the way, if you’re not familiar with Brigada, you might want to check it out. It’s a great place for receiving and sharing all things related to cross-cultural work.)
Why is a conference for photographers relevant to you, dear readers? Because I know some of you like to take photos, and some of you are rather good at it, too. And for those of you, I have a favor to ask. Could you help out us cross-cultural bloggers? It’s not easy finding good photos for the kind of topics that show up in our writing, and, frankly, it can end up adding a last level of stress before we hit the publish button. (Is it really what I’m looking for? Is it appropriate? Has it been used here before?!!)
Take, for instance, the picture at the top of this page. You may have noticed that it’s the same photo as the one I used for my post in July. Or you may just be thinking, “Ugh, another generic plane-wing-out-the-window shot.” Either way, it’s not ideal.
But that’s what we need, some “ideal” photos of, by, and for cross-cultural workers. You may already have your own ideas. If not, let me plant some seeds in the fertile field of your creativity. You’ll no doubt recognize some of these tried-and-true images, but I’m asking for an increase in quantity and quality: quantity, so that we don’t have to reuse the same photos again and again (see above), and quality, so that it doesn’t seem as if we’re using photos again and again (ditto). So when you read “more” below, think “more and better.”
Oh yeah, and free. Free, as in creative commons or public domain.
So more and better . . . and free.
For instance, there aren’t enough photos of world maps and globes. We need more photos of unique maps and globes, antique maps and globes, and maps and globes labeled in non-English languages.
Ask a Third Culture Kid, “Where are you from?” and in response you might get a deep sigh or a quizzical look . . . or a quick, simple answer that staves off more questions. There are other ways to ask for the same information. There’s “Where’s home?” A better question might be “Where have you lived?” Or if you’re a fan of quizzical looks, you could ask, “Where do you hail from?” Hmmmmm. What does that even mean?
Ask no more. (I’m referring to the question, “What does that even mean?” not “Where are you from?”)
According to Douglas Harper of the Online Etymology Dictionary, hail is a
salutation in greeting, c. 1200, from Old Norse heill “health, prosperity, good luck,” or a similar Scandinavian source, and in part from Old English shortening of wæs hæil “be healthy.”
The dictionary goes on to say that around the same time the verb heilen appeared, meaning “to call from a distance.” Then it tackles to hail from, referencing The Dictionary of Americanisms, which, in 1848, called it “a phrase probably originating with seamen or boatmen . . . meaning to come from, to belong to.”
The same entry gives the date of origin for to hail from as 1841. But I did some searching of my own, using Google Books, and found an occurrence (same wording, same meaning) from March 27, 1832. It was spoken by US representative Franklin E. Plummer of Mississippi, during a House debate on a bill concerning the sale of public lands:
Who are the citizens of the old States, that they should be envious of the growing prosperity of their younger sister States? Are we not from the same common stock and origin; and ought not our interests and feelings to be the same? We participated equally with the present population of the old States in the battles of the revolution. It is not the gentleman from New York, nor his constituents, to whom we are indebted for the achievement of those glorious victories of which he so loudly boasts, and of which we all have reason to be proud. It was not the gentleman on my right, [Mr. Briggs,] who hails from the ancient commonwealth, and represents my native district, that fought those battles which secured to us that independence and that liberty which we all in common enjoy; but it was his grandsire and mine, who fought, side by side, at the memorable battles of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill.
The 1841 date comes from the Oxford English Dictionary, which is one of Harper’s sources. Does that mean I’ve scooped the OED? Is a Netflix movie with the title The Publisher and the Blog Guy in my future?
I doubt you’ll get the reference, so let me explain. I’m thinking about the 2019 film The Professor and the Madman, starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn. The story, based on true events, goes like this: In the late 1800s, James Murray (the “professor”) became the editor of a work that would in time grow into the OED. In order to tackle the massive project, he enlisted volunteers to scour English literature to find the oldest usages of words. One of those volunteers was an American, William Chester Minor (the “madman”). Minor had been a surgeon in the Union army during the Civil war, moved to England, and, suffering from mental illness, shot and killed a man. He was deemed insane and placed in an asylum, and it was there, surrounded by his collection of books, that he became one of the OED‘s major contributors. He was befriended by Murray, and their story became the subject of Simon Winchester’s 1998 novel The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness, and the Love ofWords, later published as The Professor and the Madman.
I’m thinking that Steven Spielberg could direct my biopic, highlighting my new efforts in updating the OED. And Tom Hanks would probably do a decent job portraying me. My story wouldn’t be as dramatic as Minor’s, but who knows what Spielberg and Hanks could do with some poetic license. Yes, I can almost smell the popcorn. . . .
Well, maybe not. It’s awfully hard to imagine floating among the cinematic stars when others keep pulling you down to earth. There’s Douglas Harper, for one. I found an interview he did with the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education, in which he says “I can go trace modern words and usages (post-1700) using digital archives.” Hey, that’s what I did! And then he puts me in my place with “I can back-date the OED 5 times in 10 minutes.”
OK, OK, he’s got me beat . . . by a long shot. I guess I’ll humbly step aside and let Harper be the subject of the next blockbuster movie on word etymologies. But I still went ahead and sent in my finding to the OED, using their online submission form. And for that I received the following message:
Thank you for submitting your word or evidence!
Yes, it was in red. And, yes, it ended with an exclamation mark.
If that isn’t encouraging, then I don’t know what is. I’m not giving up yet. I hail from a long line of dreamers, after all.
Clearing Customs 