A Dose of Reverse Culture Shock (plus a little on a class picnic)

3-31-09 (even though I am writing this on April 1st)

I am quite happily done with being sick. No more stuffy nose!!

I got my first dose of reverse culture shock this past weekend. You might be wondering how I could have a chance to suffer from RCS when I haven't gotten back from the Marshall Islands yet. Well, it's actually quite simple. Ebeye is in a peculiar situation. It is in Kwajalein Atoll, named after the largest island in the atoll. Kwajalein Island is home to a United States military base--they research missiles and other random stuff. About 1200 people live there, and only twelve families are actually military families. Everybody else is contractors and what not.

The missions committee from the Protestant church on Kwaj finagled it so that most of the missionaries who are on Ebeye got a chance to spend a weekend on Kwajalein. We took the 6:00 boat to Kwaj, then waited around while they processed us and made us visitor badges. Then they shuttled us to the Kwaj Lodge so we could drop off our gear in our rooms for the weekend. Each lady got her own room! (That was very nice, by the way.) Then they took us to the Adult Recreational Center and fed us pizza and subs from Subway. We played round-the-world ping pong and went swimming in a saltwater pool (it would be a waste for the pool to be fresh water) and then went to bed. We had our own Sabbath worship the next morning and everyone did their own thing for a few hours. They had given us gift cards in order for us to get food from the food court (Burger King and Baskin Robbins; Subway didn't participate) and so that's where I ate, even though it felt weird because it was Sabbath. One of the coolest things was that my roommate, Emily, had brought along her phone card and let me use it so I could call my mom and have her call me back (it was like calling California). I talked with my family close to two hours. In fact, I completely shocked my littlest brother, David. Mom says that his eyes got wide, his jaw dropped, his face turned red, he staggered back a step with his hand on his chest and then started laughing. It's nice to hear your family members' voices after eight months of not hearing them!

On Saturday night they had a potluck feast for us. (Potluck because they all contributed something to it; it wasn't catered like the pizza and subs.) They also did live music for us. We had good food and conversation and then went back to the Lodge. A group of us went swimming again, and then went to the ARC to play foosball and air hockey before the place closed. On Sunday morning, we visited their services (since a large portion of it was to honor the missionaries) and then we ate lunch at Cafe Pacific, a buffet place akin to Ryan's, but much smaller. Then Megan, Landen, and I walked to the Turtle Pond and saw the sea turtles that live in the pond. (I will try to post some pictures of them. They are so beautifully majestic.) Then I went back to the Lodge and then they shuttled us to the dock and we came back to Ebeye.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but found myself feeling irritated and sometimes downright angry about some of the situation. At least I recognized it for what it was--reverse culture shock. The streets on Kwaj were so clean and empty, and the place was so silent. I felt alternately relaxed and uptight by the cleanliness, emptiness, and silence. It was weird to be back in a place where no one gave me a second glance--I still stuck out, since I was easily recognizable as a visitor, but I didn't stick out quite as much as I do when I'm on Ebeye. It was nice to be in a place with fruit and vegetables so readily available, but it struck me as being completely unfair because of the massive lack of readily available vegetables and fruits on Ebeye. There's nothing barring the people on Kwaj from coming over to Ebeye (unlike the security checkpoint that we have to go through to get into Kwaj), but yet they are very unknowledgeable about life here. (Perhaps it's because they don't go into people's homes much. I don't know.) One of the ladies even asked me if we had refrigerators over here! I said that we do, and when the power goes off, we just leave the door closed. What did she think we stored our food in? Stone jars that we left in the coral soil?

It was strange that I both felt grateful and angry, but I quickly recognized what it was. I recognized it for RCS because of two things: 1) plenty of descriptions during SM class and 2) I remember how I felt after getting back after a month in India. I didn't know what it was after I got back from India, but I know now, and hopefully that makes my transition in early June a little easier. Despite the fact that I've mellowed quite a bit, I still have a temper that's pretty quick to flare. So I figure that I need to be careful when I get back--so I don't lash out at people who haven't done what I've done, so I don't judge them for not thinking the same way that I do, etc,. For there's a lot that I'm looking forward to: hot fresh water showers, seeing family and friends, seeing trees and grass, playing my bass clarinet, etc., but I know that I am different now, and that I just need to be aware of that. Now I'm definitely looking forward to camp and to going back to Southern (especially for the returning SM retreat; I'm pretty sure I'm going to need it!). I actually was relieved when we got back to Ebeye, and I'm not quite sure that I can define why I felt that way. Kwaj was nice, but I don't think I'd want to live there. I would get bored pretty quickly, and I felt disconnected from everybody--and although solitude and privacy can be nice and necessary at times, they're not the most important things in the world. I'm still really forming my thoughts about our weekend on Kwaj, and so maybe all of this rambling doesn't completely make sense. That's okay, I'm still working it all out. Just ask me in a couple months if you see me.

On Monday Emily and I had our combined class picnics on Shell Island. Our kids did an excellent job of planning, but I wished that more of the sophomores had brought the food they had said they would bring. We had enough food, but just barely. (By the way, that's not the normal way the food for a picnic goes.) A group of us came back a little before 4:00 PM and so I got to register for my next semester's classes. It was very exciting. I'll be taking sixteen hours of classes in the fall. Fun fun.

More later.

~Ashlee