life as an expat

There is something quite unique about living in another country(at least in a city)- really, I suppose there are many unique things, but the one I'm thinking of is the intersection with not just the culture you are living in but with many others as well. Rabat, as the capital of Morocco, has embassy's from tons of countries and draws students from loads of others as well. Our church (English speaking for the moment) has people from more than 25 countries and it's only about 150 people I think. In Aceh it was the same and in Japan to a lesser degree (really only Brazilians, Koreans, and native English speakers that I met). So as we add each new country, we add to our knowledge of loads of world cultures.

Last night, we went to our classmate's house for dinner. She doesn't speak much English and we don't speak Korean, but thankfully our mutual friends, the Kims, came along as well and are trilingual :-) I stepped into her home and tried to put back on my Korean "culture cap"- which isn't as developed as some of the others that I have- especially when it comes to dining etiquette. I did remember to take off my shoes at the door though. Anyway, it was a feast- we had about 10 dishes and they were really delicious flavors. It was special for several reasons but one is that there are no Korean restaurants in Rabat so we could only get that delicious food in someone's home. I miss that about America- the variety of cuisine available publicly. In Asia, it was virtually impossible to get Mexican food and here good Asian food is really rare. So we miss our...sushi, various curries, and delicious dahls.

In other cross-cultural news, I met a really great family from Ghana in church last week and we are making friends. I've met four members of the family, but I'm not totally sure of the relationships- two girls 2.5 and 7 or 8 and a 30 something guy and a 50+ woman. Today they brought me some Ghanaian chocolate and I brought them some pop rocks- probably not an equal trade but it was the best I could do.

The bonus, though, of being an expat with other expats is that there is a lot of grace for cultural faux-pas(s) so we get great Korean food at a friends without worrying too much about what grave errors we are making with our table manners and the like. It's a wonderful thing.

The Kims (Bum-Gyu and Kate-who are such wonderful people- fun and interesting and compassionate and multi-talented) and Mrs Yu (Sook-Ja).