For the first 30 years of my life I
have lived in a specific cultural setting.
Throughout my life I have had the opportunity to visit and experience
other cultures on a short term basis, and I have gained a wealth of knowledge
from those experiences. Living in a
different culture allows you to experience many new things. Our family is coming up on a full year of
living in Macedonia and we have had the opportunity to learn many things about
life. We have learned that there are
multiple ways of doing things. In the
same way that we have to learn to speak different languages, we also need to
learn new ways to act in a new culture.
As “visitors” in this new culture we have to learn how to interact with
people around us, and do so without making it harder to build meaningful
relationships. Living in Macedonia we
have learned that just because things are done differently does not make one
way of life better or worse than the other, they are just different. Some things ultimately do not translate from
one culture to the other, but having compassion for each other does
translate.
