Journal Entry #31 - 4/2/12

So, even before today, I've been thinking a lot about culture shock, and how I'm going to respond to being in London after I get there and the Honeymoon stage wears off. I remember arriving in Brasil - the honeymoon stage lasted about 3 hours, and after that I was just overwhelmed, haha. After we got off the plane and started walking around, not understanding a thing people were saying, and then that crazy ride in the van through Sao Paulo until we got to the Brazilian MTC...about the time we were out of the van and through to the first MTC meeting, my patience was starting to wear thin.

My feeling is, however, that having already gone to Brasil will make adjusting to London a lot easier. London is a big city, just like Sao Paulo. The largest differences will be the quality of living conditions - London will be much, much better than Sao Paulo. However, Sao Paulo is a placed where I have lived for nearly two years - minus a few months down on the beach - and London is untried territory. I've walked up and down the city of Sao Paulo and I know almost all of the stations on the blue line on the Sao Paulo Metro without even looking at the signs. I know the bus routes, the names of neighborhoods, the names of local soccer teams, and the local jargon. In London, I pretty much only know what I've read and seen in the prep class and what I've seen in the movies. And what Kate Fox has told me. Most of all, I don't know any people in London. For that reason alone, London will be a lonely place for the first few weeks. Sao Paulo is full of people I know - people whose houses I've been in, living rooms I've sat in, kitchens I've had lunches in. My list of contacts will have to start from ground zero in London, and that is going to take some doing. I forget that the networks that I created in Sao Paulo took months and months to develop. The fastest that I ever got to know a ward was in my last area, and there my bishop provided me with a Google map that had all the members of the ward council labeled with their home and cell phones. I'm not going to have any such list when I get to London, but I'll certainly have to start compiling one. It'll be an adventure. But, I think the faster I get started once I'm there, the faster I'll get over the culture shock. It'll be an adventure.

Journal Entry #28 - 3/26/12

So it has been a while since I've written a journal entry here. With that fairly long-winded IRB application turned in, and an even more long-winded research proposal almost finished (I'll cut it down, don't worry), I think I can finally see the light at the end of this tunnel of field study preparation. Class Friday with Margaret was really helpful. The problem is that elements of my project keep adjusting slightly, and while the changes are reflected in some parts of the proposal, other sections are still based on old ideas. This is why you don't sew new cloth into an old garment; it makes for patchwork proposals.

I spent a lot of time on Friday thinking about the London, England experience that I'm going to have. If I do end up living with a host family, I decided it would definitely be my preference. Families are always so interesting, and I would probably gain a lot more useful contacts and learn a lot more about people in London than in a flat with other college-aged youths. Not trying rag too much the college-aged, but a family might also be a little bit of a calmer place to live, and I'm all about having a quiet place to hang out. Otherwise I'll have to find a nearby library.

After spending some time looking at the London underground maps, you really begin wishing you had a photographic memory. I'm used to the Sao Paulo metro map, which is quite a bit simpler. As it was, I only stayed on one side of that city. I may roam a little farther around London. As I was looking up tourist spots of interest in London I was fascinated by everything that goes on at the Convent Garden. Looking through the website I read about around a dozen different shows, museums, and attractions that I would be interested in seeing during my spare time (hopefully I'll have some :), and there are a few nearby churches as well. It's very close to the center of London and other famous locations like Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus, so I can't see myself missing it.

I also looked up a website with reviews of the different museums in London. I swear, there must be a hundred of them. Still, even if it's hard to choose, I'm all about free attractions.

So, I've been reading "The Road to Wigan Pier", by George Orwell, for my History of England since 1689 class. It's an incredible example of participant observation. Orwell spent months following around miners and working class people during the depression of the 1930s in northern England, eating their food and living in their lodging houses. (SIdenote here: I'm so pleased with my class choices this semester, because so far there has been so much overlap, including what I learned in this book). As I was reading, I noticed at least half a dozen places that I have heard of because I have seen them on the map of England on Google Maps (I've studied the map at least ten different times now), and on page 15 Orwell actually calls lunch "dinner", exactly as Kate Fox noted that many lower class people still do today. Hehe, that was really cool, as I definitely wouldn't have noticed without her help. I spent a bit of time yesterday talking to a friend from my ward who served a mission in Birmingham. His comments were that many people in the smaller towns don't have much to do during the day, and many of them have become very adept at living off the government. He also told me to never say the word "pants". Just "trousers" will do the job. I guess I pretty much just wear jeans. Hopefully just calling them "jeans" will help me not to slip up.

Journal Entry #25 - 3/14/12

I am so impressed with the quality of the documents that we get to read for this class. I have to say I was very entertained by Lee's "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari", with his first-hand narrative that had a tone that sounded just like he were telling the story to a group of friends. It reminded me of my experience in Brasil when I had just arrived. All the sisters in the ward would be so concerned that we missionaries weren't eating enough, and they would constantly tell us "Eat more Elder, eat more!" as if we were purposely holding ourselves back from eating as much as we really wanted to. The truth was quite the opposite. I don't consider myself a man with a monstrous appetite either, so being told to eat more when I was quite full already was very uncomfortable. It was months before I had learned how to respond properly, and by that time my body had adjusted to a very large midday meal anyway, and I became rather proud of my ability to put food away at lunch time. (Alas, I have lost the ability) And it's funny to me now how I reacted with irritation when I would hear the same thing, day after day, from Brazilians that were members and nonmembers, male or female, old or young, that same phrase "Eat more Elder, eat more!!". What kind of cultural phenomenon could make an entire people obsessed with making their lunch guests overstuffed and sleepy every day at 2 pm? It took about a year to figure out that it was simply an expression of high regard for their guests to treat us this way. However, the truth was if our hosts hadn't cared much about two dressed-up missionaries eating lunch in their house, they wouldn't have thought twice to mention that we should eat more. By telling us to "make yourselves at home", and "eat just like you would in your own house" (i.e. eat A LOT), they were just telling us how pleased they were that we had come to their home for lunch. Once I realized the sentiment behind the practice, I became much more determined to eat my fill at lunch time. Eating a lot was a form of gratitude for the food they had made (and to be perfectly honest, the food was incredible, so I had no complaints about eating a lot). And, since we didn't have much time in the mornings to eat breakfast, the raging appetite that I had by lunchtime only made being polite even easier.

I don't know how the English act around mealtimes, or what startling cultural practices I may observe while I'm there, I do know that the faster you can learn them, the faster you can fit in among them. The Brazilian people love to speak with their hands, and they have all sorts of signs and gestures that they use to express certain feelings or meanings. What's so funny about it is that only very few Brazilians actually notice it about themselves. After about a year in Sao Paulo, I started memorizing different gestures and their meanings and doing demonstrations at lunchtimes as entertainment. I can remember one family in particular, rolling with laughter at the two dozen or so gestures I had memorized, not just because the signs and gestures were commonly used, but because here was this funny-accented American doing them all. It was a great way to help Brazilians feel like we were, if not one of them, close enough to be very good friends.

That being said, it still feels a little strange walking into London and just finding a place to stay and building up connections and friendships from what will be, essentially, nothing. It's also exciting though, and even though I'll only have three months, hopefully I'll be observant enough to catch on to little nuances that will help me get along well with Londoners while I'm there, and every time I go back and visit :)