So, here we go. 

In just six weeks and two days, I will set out for Araguaína, Brazil (in the state of Tocantins) where I will stay for practically the entire duration of 2015.  I will be working as an English Teaching Assistant through Fulbright and will serve as a "cultural ambassador" of the United States to the city and people of Araguaína while I am there.  At the moment I'm in a bit of a state of blissful ignorance, in which I am both incredibly excited about the experience that is to come and dreading all the ways in which I know the first month of the learning process will be challenging, tiring, and difficult, but nevertheless very rewarding. 

Throughout this experience and later life experiences, as well, I want to make a conscious effort to remind myself to continue to have the mentality ("mentalidade" in Portuguese) of a Japanese concept called wasi-sabi.  My family (and my mother, in particular) know me and my love of languages very well and purchased me this beautiful book called Lost In Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World for Christmas, which included an explanation of this concept.  According to Ezra Pound,  "The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension." I firmly agree with him.  Those of you who know me well and also speak other languages know that sometimes I will say a word in another language even when I know the English equivalent because the English doesn't quite carry the same cultural understanding.  Just because the English equivalent of the German "Gemuetlichkeit" is "comfortableness," for example, this does not mean that "comfortableness" in English also implies the same degree of coziness of being around good company and a small group of good friends with whom you can pour out your heart. (If you are interested how language and culture are inseparable, look up the theory of linguistic relativity, aka Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I'd love to talk with you more about it).  

ANYWAYS, according to this book, "wasi-sabi" is defined as "finding beauty in the imperfections, an acceptance of the cycle of life and death."  Another website (below) describes it as "the Japanese idea of embracing the imperfect, of celebrating the worn, the cracked, the patinaed, an acceptance of the toll that life takes on us."  This upcoming adventure, I know, in many ways will test my limits and give me many humbling moments.  I will probably fall down many times (both literally and figuratively, as many of you know my bad luck with balance while walking or running on roads in developing countries), but I aim to see the beauty in every situation and every person I encounter.  I aim to remember that all I encounter are also God's children.  I want to remember Philippians 4:8 daily and "look for the good in those around me." I want to become more aware of my own immense privilege and personal bias and have my heart broken for injustice.  Regardless of what happens, I have to trust that I am called to be in Araguaína this year ant that God has a plan for me in being there. 

This upcoming move will be the fourth (4th!) time in my life that I have moved to a country I have never previously been to that speaks a different language that I have never before been completely immersed in.  You'd think that by know I'd be totally used to and comfortable with these transitions (and, don't get me wrong, I do love all the excitement that comes with them!) but every time I move I am still brought back to the day when I, as a vulnerable six-year-old child, moved from Tennessee, USA (where I was born and lived for the first few years of my life) to Germany and entered public elementary school at St. Magnus in Bremen, Germany for the first time.  I remember the initial panic of having a classroom of twenty children turn and stare at me while not being able to understand anything they were saying.  I felt a similar feeling of being overwhelmed and trying to make sense of my new environment the first time I stepped into my Greek I.B. school as a sixteen-year-old and felt the large "personal space bubble" I had formed after six years of living in Indiana instantly punctured by friendly strangers who greeted me with kisses on either cheek, as well as on the first day of class at Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina when I found myself in a Statistics class of forty people as the only non-Argentine and non-native Spanish speaker.

In hindsight, I realize even more how beautiful each of these experiences has been and how fortunate I am to have had them.  Even the difficulties brought with them a great amount of joy and valuable lessons in character development and resilience.  This fall I had the amazing opportunity of re-connecting with friends in Germany and Greece and in many ways coming to terms with the roles these experiences have played in my life, a good thing to do before evaluating how this next piece will fit in the larger mix of puzzle pieces that will eventually assemble themselves into my life story.  

My role as an English teacher, and not as a student, will also distinguish this upcoming experience from previous ones.  I need to be sensitive to my students' needs and realize that some of them might feel just as daunted by learning English as I did on the first day of German first grade.  I will strive to be flexible and create a learning environment that encourages taking chances and making mistakes without fear of failure, for we know that all of life is a series of mistakes that proves to be a series of learned lessons.  My contact with some of the people I come into contact with might be the only contact or most contact that they have ever had with an American, so I hope to also positively represent myself and my multifaceted country that I can sometimes be quite critical of.  I anxiously await and look forward to all that is to come and am so thankful to have been given this wonderful opportunity. 

The next few weeks will be very busy as I finish up a job in San Francisco and take an English teaching certification course, but if you would like to reach me, please contact me: christa.joy.g@gmail.com. 

Love and blessings to all of you!



 http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/7-cultural-concepts-we-dont-have-in-the-us

http://www.untranslatablebook.com/the-book/