Education Across Cultures

Post image for On Freezing. Oh, and an Announcement!

July 19, 1990

Eugene airport. 5:50am.

I kiss my parents, brother, best friend, and everything that goes with senior year of high school good-bye. I hand my ticket to the gate agent. She tells me to enjoy my flight.

Then, I freeze.

As excited as I am about moving to Germany, second thoughts glue my feet to the airport carpet. What am I doing leaving my family, my friends, what’s supposed to be the best year of high school – everything that’s known, familiar, and comfortable – for the complete unknown? What if I get homesick? What if I can’t learn German? What if my friends forget about me?

I’m convinced that the gate agent will have to push me down the jetway and onto the plane. But she simply smiles at me.

I quickly realize that nobody is going to push me. The only person who can unfreeze me and get me moving down the jetway is me. So I take a deep breath, wave a final, somewhat teary good-bye, and board the smallest plane I’ve ever seen.

The plane door closes, and it’s official: I’m on my way to spend my senior year of high school living with a family I’d never met, speaking a language I barely knew, in a country I’d never visited.

I want to pat myself on the back and throw up at the same time.

November 16, 2010

Eugene airport. 5:50am.

In the 18+ years I’ve lived away from Eugene, I’ve only flown in/out of that airport a handful of times (I fly into Portland instead). Waiting to board my tiny commuter flight to Portland in the dark hours of the early morning that memory of being frozen in transition comes rushing back. It was 20 years ago but it feels like yesterday.

Yesterday. Last week. Last month. Much of 2010. I feel like I’ve been frozen in transition all year.

A few highlights: I started being asked to do consulting and training for some awesome organizations, got more involved in a national professional association, and celebrated my husband’s milestone birthday.

Then, Aaron’s Dad passed away. I got laid off. Worst of all, my grandma unexpectedly died. Somewhere in there Aaron and I celebrated our 10th anniversary.

Fortunately, not all of this year’s transitions were horrible, and the horrible events (namely the deaths of my father-in-law and grandmother) didn’t happen all at once. And I know that in the grand scheme of things, my year of transition is nothing compared to some people’s.

Anyway. Even as 2010 winds down, I still find myself in transition. But at least I no longer feel frozen in it, as I have for the past several months. I no longer feel like I did 20 years ago at the airport when I was frozen (albeit for only about 15 seconds) between the familiar and comfortable and the big scary unknown.

Instead, today I’m happily walking down the jetway, so to speak, to 2011…away from the familiar and comfortable last few years and towards all of the unknown a new year – and a new path – brings.

I want to pat myself on the back and throw up at the same time.

All this to say…

This will be the final post on CulturallyTeaching.com. I’ve launched a new website: SmallPlanetStudio.com. I’ve been transitioning to this website for a few months now and am so excited that’s if finally live.

SmallPlanetStudio.com is similar to CulturallyTeaching.com but the focus of SPS is on intercultural educators (i.e. teachers, students, intercultural trainers, consultants and coaches, homeschooling parents, etc…), rather than just K-12 teachers.

We’re also expanding the topics we’ll cover to include travel, global citizenship, study abroad, teaching, training and coaching, and cool people doing awesome things – in addition to intercultural communication, culture, and schools and education around the world.

You’ll also find an increasing number and variety of resources for intercultural educators – downloads, teleclasses, -workshops and -courses, and a bunch of other things. What I’m most excited about with SmallPlanetStudio.com is that we’re collaborating with some really fantastic intercultural educators.

So come on over and check out the cool logo my awesome friend created, a new series highlighting awesome people doing intercultural work, and photos from Ireland (where I am right now).

What this change to SmallPlanetStudio.com means for you:

:: If you subscribe to CulturallyTeaching.com’s RSS feed — you’ll need to re-subscribe to SmallPlanetStudio.com’s feed. Click here to do so.

:: If you’re an email subscriber, you may not have to do anything. I’m going to *try* to transfer you to SmallPlanetStudio.com’s new and improved email subscription list. If it doesn’t work, I’ll post a note here with instructions for re-subscribing to SmallPlanetStudio.com.

Thanks for reading CulturallyTeaching.com. See you over at SmallPlanetStudio.com!

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