Culture Fatigue

Culture stress or culture fatigue is a common phrase for us to hear in working in missions overseas.  It can best defined as a season you experience, in waves, when the things of culture -- language, driving, food, smells, sights, ways of doing things, difference in religions, etc.  seem to burden you more than usual.  Now those stresses are always present and you always feel them in your day to day, but during "culture fatigue" they feel heavy or never ending.

It is safe to say we (or I) am in a season of culture fatigue.  Driving (which is always in traffic) makes you want to pull your hair out.  The dust coming off the streets and the huge trucks that is sticking to your sweaty face seems no longer tolerable.  The constant cancellation of appointments, pick-ups, drop-offs, or meetings make you wonder if you can ever get anything done.  The 9th meal in a row with white rice no longer tastes good (even though it did at one time).  The unending honking of horns, bells, and whistles makes your ears ring, and head throb for minutes after stepping into a quite building.  The construction next door at 6:00am (every morning) is not something I want to compete with anymore with my ipod.  Everything, and I mean everything, is made with the poorest quality, and something is always breaking or falling apart.  That no matter what time of year or time of day it is it is never cooler than 85 degrees. You get the point...

So what is the answer?  We talk (and write) often about thankfulness and the phrase I have read continues to resignate in my mind: "Can I take each seeming problem and turn it back to praise?"  So here it goes:

- I drive a moto and that is much faster than driving a car. Thank you for our reliable and awesome moto.
- Thank you for all the wonderful face wash that is brought to us with visitors or in care packages.
- Thank you for having us be a part of three amazing ministries that glorify God's name everyday.  And that we have accomplished more than we could of ever imagined in 16 months!
- Thank you for our amazing cook, Ohm, who without fail makes us a delicious Khmer meal every day and when we come home we just heat up dinner, and boom, we are eating! Thank you that I don't have to go to the market and try to buy meat off a hook!!!
- Thank you for the safety and protection we have been given while driving.  I guess the honking does help.
- Thank you for the ipod, and the dock we have in our home that helps us feel normal.  Thank you for all the generous people who give us itunes gift cards and send us music so we are not stuck with songs from 2009.
- Thank you for just being given super glue, so I could run around our house and glue everything back in place again.
-Thank you for all our generous donors that allow us to afford air-con when we sleep at night.

God does provide, and we are thankful for that.  I will say that this morning was the first time that I told a friend and Chris that I can't wait to be in America this summer not just to see people but also to have something for once be easy.  Then our friend responds with, "girl, you have culture fatigue, and so do I."

Here are some great photos of our fascinating city of Phnom Penh.

We have much to be thankful for here.