Hello Everyone,

On this rainy day in Siena, my mind turned to my experiences of living in other cultures. One of the great ironies I discovered, when I

PIAZZA DEL CAMPO, SIENA, ITALY

lived in Italy in 1996, was that living in a different culture taught me to see my own in a completely new light. My journey to perceiving my own culture more clearly began in Europe, but continued when I lived in Bangkok for almost three years. Living on two different continents and later marrying a man from the Congo who I met in my church in Bangkok, opened my eyes to my Australian culture, as I had something to compare it with, instead of thinking that our way of doing things and thinking was ‘normal.’ I came to use that term with great caution, as my knowledge of other cultures grew. I also taught students from many cultures when I returned home and that reinforced my understanding that, when we use the term ‘normal,’ we really mean ‘thinking and acting like me.’

What do I mean by this? I mean eating fufu and Moambe chicken with your hands is normal in the Congo. Standing up at the counter of a bar to have a brioche for breakfast is normal in Italy. Eating your green curry and rice with a dessertspoon is normal in Thailand, or pinching off pieces of sticky rice in your fingers and dipping it in the green mango salad is perfectly normal in Thailand but eating with your  fingers in Australia might raise a few eyebrows. In Italy and Australia, it is normal to ask someone how they are going, when you meet. A Thai person would be perplexed by such a question. Why are you asking about their health. There is nothing wrong with them. Their only concern is whether or not you have eaten, an activity of the utmost importance. Thais never ask you how you are,  just ‘Gin lao, ka?’ Have you eaten?  Cross-cultural living is not as simple as knowing the opening hours of shops and banks, or how to catch the local buses, or realising that Italians think you’re pazzo if you order a cappuccino after 11a.m.

After 3 years of living on the tenth floor of a 22-storey building in Bangkok with a pool on the 6th floor, a store open downstairs and a tailor and masseuse upstairs, it is hard to adjust to the isolation of Australia’s suburban, 9-to-5 living. Besides those conveniences, there was the gigantic shopping centre a 5-minute tuktuk ride away which was open till 9p.m. every night of the week. It was a terrible shock to return to restricted shopping hours. Differences in mindset were most striking when a friend in Bangkok bought an apartment without a kitchen. ‘Why would I want a kitchen when there is fresh food available on the streets 24 hours a day?’ she asked, puzzled by my peculiar insistence that one couldn’t live without a kitchen. Yes, I had to adjust my thinking about street food. Up till that point, I had considered it a health risk. Seeing it as a bounteous benefit, the very definition of convenience, required a 180-degree shift in my thinking.

I remember when I returned from Italy at the end of 1996 and took a job at Taminmin High School in Humpty Doo. In those eight weeks, ironically, I experienced the greatest culture shock of my life. Nothing had prepared me for feeling as out of place as a Ferrari in a Ford factory in my own country. In fact, in my own classroom . . . after many years of teaching in which I thought I had encountered every possible intellectual, social and psychological challenge. I discovered I was the eighth teacher the Year 8’s had had that year. Many of the students in the middle school were disengaged. Desperately, I sought ways to simplify the courses and make the classes more relevant. What I didn’t realise at the time was that culture shock works both ways.

Apparently, I was giving them as big a dose of culture shock as they were giving me! How was that possible? Wasn’t I back in my own country? Weren’t we all speaking the same language? Hadn’t we all grown up in the same country? Gradually, I learnt I had arrived during ‘the build up.’ I laughed in disbelief when I heard what that was. I was wrong to be so dismissive. People take this seriously. This period of unusually humid weather was an invisible enemy that took up temporary residence in the vulnerable and wreaked havoc on their wellbeing. I needed to respect this challenging aspect of their lives. Another idiosyncrasy of life in the top end is that one is forbidden to turn off the ceiling fans. They circle slowly 24 hours a day for fear of mould growing on them from the moist air. In time, I also discovered this was the land in which some kids drove quad bikes and four-wheel drives, while others lived in abandoned car bodies. It was bewildering and far more challenging than living in a foreign country and teaching a foreign language.

A mature young lady in Year 9 wrote me a letter, explaining that

WINDMILLS AT PENONG JUST WEST OF CEDUNA , THE LAST RELIABLE WATER SUPPLY BEFORE THE NULLABOR

they were just ‘simple country kids’ and they didn’t understand my ‘sophisticated ways.’ This was both astonishing and amusing to me, a girl who was brought up in Ceduna, a more far-flung place than Humpty Doo which was situated on the outskirts of a capital city! I had to reassess the effect of living for a year in Florence, one of the great cultural centres of Europe. Needless to say, that was a steep learning curve, not what I was expecting back on Australian soil.

Just to complicate things further on the culture and conventions front, I later married a Congolese man, introducing me to the third continent to open my eyes to different ways of thinking. I learnt I would be more attractive, if I had a bigger bottom. Moreover, I would have to fatten my husband up, if I wanted to be seen as a good wife by his African friends.

In all these reminiscences, the point that  I’m making is that experiencing other cultures turned out to be the key to understanding my own. The key to understanding why it is so

THE PONTE VECCHIO ACROSSS THE RIVER ARNO

difficult for many European, Asian and African immigrants to adapt to our suburban lives, our 9 to 5 schedules, our empty streets. I mean, there is no walking home from the ballet in Florence and stopping on the Ponte Vecchio for a gelato at midnight. And there is no picking up a sala bao on the street as you stroll home from work with a friend as you would do in Bangkok. There, you never hurry. You never eat alone. That’s not the Thai way.

DUOMO DOORS IN FLORENCE

If you are keen to see your own culture through fresh eyes, I believe the only truly effective way of unveiling its idiosyncrasies is by opening the doors of other cultures and plunging into the disconbobulating mysteries within. Yes, it will be challenging, but also tremendously enlightening.

Enjoy the journey!

Julie