Does this mean I've adapted?

When you relocate to a very different place, whether it's across the country or out of your home country entirely, you grapple long and often with that thing we call "culture shock."

I prefer to call it "culture stress," because it's not that you are in a constant state of shock; it's more an on-again-off-again state of stress.

Some missionaries have told me that it's sort of like the stages of grief, in that you don't go through the five stages of culture shock in a linear order and then you're done; you go through them once, and may revisit previous stages again, periodically, after you think you've adapted to your new home.

I've also been told that it takes five years of living in another country before you finally begin thinking like people in that country. The same is true when you return home.

So, I suppose it's a bit optimistic to think we've completely settled into the culture here. And I'm not sure if I should be oddly encouraged by an experience I had over the weekend: I became completely enamored with a street I was driving on while going to a friend's house.

It's the first place in Switzerland that has even remotely resembled America to me in any way. In fact, as I cruised this street, everything began to be surreal and I felt disoriented. The narrow, two-lane road was very straight, and lined on both sides with automobile dealerships, complete with the balloons and garish sale ads; there were fast food restaurants -- Burger King and McDonald's -- as well as the big billboards advertising that they were up ahead.

There were one- and two-story office buildings with plain, unattractive designs and corrugated metal rooftops, as well as small, strip shopping centers and big shopping centers, and gas station after gas station after gas station (you don't see them so close together here, usually).

I'm not saying Switzerland doesn't have these things. But I've never before seen them arranged all together, with the architecture so completely ripped off of EveryTown, America.

I began driving with one hand and snapping pictures with the other.

Then I was struck by what I was doing. All my photography in Europe has been of the picturesque half-timber homes and businesses; the Medieval, frescoed villages; the tiny cars and historic farms and castles -- everything that was previously foreign and interesting and photogenic to me.

It was a bit embarrassing, then, to go slack-jawed and camera frantic over fast food restaurants and car dealerships -- stuff that not even two years ago I would not have dreamed of photographing. You'd have thought I stepped straight out of the bush.

Either the architecture that I grew up with is now unusual and foreign to me, or I am a bit homesick. :-)

-- Gina

A New (And Different) Academic Year

My work at EuNC has continually evolved from before I even arrived nearly two years ago. Originally tapped to run the library, I taught a class on campus, then started developing and teaching online courses, co-taught another class on campus, and became heavily involved with mentoring and supporting the campus students.

This week, a new academic year began and the campus is just as quiet now as it was the day after everyone left. They're not coming back, at least not anytime soon. Yet, make no mistake, EuNC continues in a new and expanded form so that students do not need to uproot themselves (or families), deal with hassles over visas or luggage or airfare, and can study for Christian ministry in their own immediate context. God knows what he's doing in Europe, and he knows how the people he calls into ministry over here need to be prepared.

For the next six weeks, each learning center is being carefully evaluated by members of administration located both here on campus and in the various areas of Europe. The primary focus was always on the campus, but that focus has now shifted to the learning centers. They are the new "faces" of EuNC. What's working? What needs improved? How do we solve various problems involved with decentralized education? Such questions are being dealt with over the next six weeks, and while not every detail can be known or anticipated EuNC is moving forward with a clear sense of mission and direction.

Several students have consistently asked me "How are you doing? How are you coping with the change?" Well, so far I'm doing just fine, and I don't anticipate a change for the worse. I knew they were leaving, I was prepared for the fact that they would not come back in the fall, and I quickly made the adjustment to a new routine. I miss the hilarity and the questions and the activity, and I miss the tight-knit friendship that developed between myself and several of them. Yet I'm enjoying the extra time, space and quiet as well, and don't anticipate getting bored with that. I like the fact that I'm getting to know remaining faculty and staff better. I like a lot of things about the change, though I definitely miss the students and very much hope a campus program will re-start sometime in the future.

I remain gladly available for however EuNC may see fit to use me over the next few months. I am developing one last course, Church History II; writing a brief series of Bible studies for "Engage" magazine; and exploring various possibilities and opportunities concerning our future once my work officially comes to an end at EuNC in December (we stay until the end of Gina's contract at the end of January).

Yet, as quickly as things change, who knows? I think and pray about the future regularly (most times, simultaneously). But not with a sense of worry. I've lived in ambiguity enough in the past that I'm learning a certain pattern for how I best make big decisions. It still feels funny not to have the slightest idea what is coming or what it will mean or where we will end up, but I have every confidence that it will be the right thing.