The Kirkwoods: Orientation

We've completed the first week of our two-week Orientation training. The purpose of Orientation is to introduce us and familiarize us to living cross-culturally. We've learned quite a bit of interesting, useful, comical, and saddening things so far - and there is more to come for the second week.

Our class is made up of a diverse group of people...some from Washington, some from Michigan, some from Philippines and some from the Netherlands. The fun part is that two other couples from this class will be with us during language school (our first year in Indonesia)! So, it's been great spending time with them and getting to know them, and having our kids play together now. It will make the culture shock a little less drastic with familiar faces and friends.

One experience that we had during this past week was that our class went into the home of a group of Somali refugees (there were 5 women and 2 men). One of them spoke pretty good English, and another spoke very broken English...other than that, we were on our own to try to communicate and COOK Somali food with them! The afternoon with them was challenging, but it really was a wonderful experience. They were very friendly. I got to help the women make a dish called Salambo (I'm totally guessing at the spelling...and the actual word for that matter)! Our kids played with theirs. Catelyn experienced her first bee-sting at their house...she wasn't too excited about that, but after much trying, one of our classmates managed to communicate enough to get an ice-pack for her. The Somalians are Muslim and explained (through the one that spoke English) about how and why their food was halal (acceptable before Allah to eat). This was particularly interesting to me and Corey as we will be moving to a Muslim nation. We ate our meal on a large mat on the floor. Before we began to eat, they passed a bowl of water around so that we could wash our hands. The food was placed in the middle of all of us (about 20 of us in total) and we ate with our fingers (Catelyn really liked that part). The food was very good...rice, goat, potatoes, pasta, vegetables, corn (grits), a very spicy stew-like dish, homemade hot sauce, crepe-like pancake thing (though not sweet tasting) and bananas (which I think were suppose to be the dessert).

There were a few cultural things that we needed to remember to not offend them: to use our right hand when handing something to them (the left hand is the dirty hand), take off our shoes before entering the home, not to point the bottom of our feet toward anyone (this is difficult while sitting on the floor!), and we ladies were not to have our knees or above our elbows exposed (there is obviously more, but just giving you an idea). Their bathroom is used differently than ours...no toilet paper, there is no shower curtain but instead they have a jug to pour water on themselves while standing in the shower, the shampoo and soap are at the sink along with another jug of water to wash themselves at the sink. When I went to take Catetlyn to the bathroom, our new Somali friends were very kind and accommodating to quickly hand us a stack of napkins for our use...thank you very much!

All in all, we all had a great time and truly enjoyed experiencing a very small glimpse into another culture and being introduced to some of the differences that we'll be subject to as a guest in another country. We pray that God will give us great understanding and become great students of the Acehnese culture that we may lovingly and effectively bring the good news of Jesus Christ to them.

Here are a couple pics...one of our Orientation class and some of our fun experience!

Orientation Class Fall 2009