2 Things.... & 3rdly

Have you ever read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn?  
Have you ever watched Hotel Rwanda?  

And 3rdly... Why do I mention these 2 things together?  

Half the Sky is about turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide.
Hotel Rwanda is about the fighting between the Huto and the Tutsi tribes in Rwanda.    And I'll eventually get to the 3rdly thing if you allow me enough time.  

So if we're in agreement that women do indeed "hold up half the sky" as the Chinese proverb says, and if we have read the reports and know that many places in this world women are not viewed as equals, what are we going to do about it?  

Now for Hotel Rwanda, the one scene that has stuck in my head ever since that night Bethann and I sat down to watch this movie has been where the Hotel Manager was all excited because the American reporter was able to show some footage of the horror around them on the worldwide news.  

Now he thought they will be able to get some outside help.  

But the reporters response was--- that help was not necessarily on the way.   The people probably looked up from their dinner, saw the news said, "Wow, that's horrible" and went right back to eating. 

Culture Shock

What's Culture shock?   Surely there is nothing about our beautiful American culture that is shocking.  Or is there?   

I can only imagine what it would be like for someone to set foot on American soil for the very first time.  Take someone from a hot tropical climate and have them enter JFK airport in Mid December.   
Upon entering the airport there would be the shock of the hugeness of it all.   They have just left a country with a small 3 terminal airport where they walked across the air field to climb a shaky little stairway into an the massive airplane that would take them across the ocean.  
Although they were the top English speaker in their school it's shocking for them to realize that there are many different versions of English and not everyone who speaks English actually sound the same.  If you can actually get a native English speaker to speak slowly enough there's still a good chance that the accent they speak with is different than the one learned in school.  The hugeness of the airport and the mobs of people whom they can't understand is SHOCKING.  Loneliness is overwhelming and they're thinking...if only I could turn around run back into that big machine that just dropped me in this foreign place and go back to the familiar...But the crowds keep pushing them forward. 
Then after waiting in long lines and finally finally getting all the papers stamped and the freedom to exit those airport doors they are hit with a huge blast of freezing air.  The short sleeves and flip flops just aren't working any more.  A whole new life is laying before them. 

One person may look at this and say..."My life is over."  
Another person may say..."What an adventure.  My life is just beginning." 

And Angela when experiencing reverse culture shock might say.   "My life is over" followed by "Life is an amazing adventure, wow, my life is just beginning".