Hot and humid lately all around the midwest and into the east and south. Cooling temps today as Tropical Storm Emily came onto the east coast leaving us a nice rain which brought the temp down to 77-80. Nice for us, but flooding in Charlotte. Charlotte is about 20 or 30 min. from here. We have been assigned a French church to visit this month in Charlotte. This was our first day in cross-cultural training. One of the fun things I enjoyed was going to a market in the building. There was a group of us as buyers and a group as sellers. Each were given our distinctives as a buying or selling group. Myself the buyer had to look down, no eye contact, no conversation, pay for my items, no negotiating and shake hands at the end of the deal. The sellers on the other hand were trying to make eye contact, shake our hands and get to know us and our families. They wanted to bargain. The sellers didn't know what we would be like and we didn't know what the sellers would be like. Oh and I forgot to mention that we were to spit when we got bored. Crazy, funny, intimidating, loud, obnoxious!
We also learned about the differences in describing people in photos, judgmental thoughts about what was happening in the photo and what emotions or feelings came out from looking at the photos. Then the teacher would tell us what was really happening in the photos. We had to discern what was real descriptions of things and what were our judgments. Sometimes what we think are real or true is really a judgment call and could be totally wrong.
4 tenets of learning to be around people you are not familiar with:
Assume Goodwill (about the other person)
Suspend Judgment
Tolerate Ambiguity (you don't have all the facts or information) and sometimes you have to wait for answers or act with less
information than you think you need.
Think Gray (instead of always black and white) -regarding culture.
Enough to chew on?
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