Life of a Substitute Teacher

culture shock

Well, it's been awhile since an actual post, and the long-term sub position has come and gone. In the meantime, I've become addicted to Travel Channel and the Documentary Channel on sattelite - more specifically shows that force you to become part of another culture, even if momentarily. Like, I found a clip of Anthony Bourdain on Travel Channel where he is in Indonesia and is obviously about to snark on something, when, there is suddenly the Islamic call to prayer from a nearby Mosque. All of a sudden, another Mosque starts with its call, and soon, AB is telling us how he is hearing five separate calls at once. I love the sound of the call to prayer - it reminds me of Saturdays in college when I would go to the import stores and linger with the other students there listening to NPR and talking politics, culture, and anything else intellectual. I joined the Comparative Religions group that way. Whenever I hear the call to prayer on TV or anywhere else (where else would I hear it in my life in this country right now?) I can smell the incense and feel the quiet reverence for another culture - one that is not my own and will never be as I am an American.

I went on iTunes just now and searched the term "Call to Prayer" and had country, rock, and even jazz music come up. I have some world music on there, from Iran and India, yet I know that none of it comes close to what I want to hear - the actual call itself.

Listening to the thirty-second snippets online of what "Americans" (I use the term as a stereotype for this sentence) assume to be a "call to prayer" brings me into perspective on what our culture is, but I cannot define it with mere words. Everything on there that I listened to originated with a musician in the US. Nothing showed the reverence and mystery of another culture at all (with a small exception to Wynton Marsalis whose clip I almost bought).

Hearing the call to prayer seems to remind me, beyond the Saturdays in college, of the fact that I am not right now part of something bigger. I feel isolated in our capitalist culture at the moment, isolated from free mystery and free piety. I feel isolated from freedom from propoganda and advertisement. We're never really free from any of that in this world, but still, I want to know what it would be like to wake up early in the morning to have to take care of my family while my husband tended the fields. I want to know what other peoples' lives are like in foreign (eg: not USA) cultures. Watching these "adventure" shows gives me a glimpse.

Another thing - the travel shows in general. Most of the shows that I've seen show an American as a tourist, looking for that little treasure to take back to show their neighbors in the rural or suburban US. That little snow globe in the mouse trap or something (another AB ad here). So much of our middle class US culture is about getting those treasures to show off to our peers. But, what if it was different? What if we traveled for the sake of learning about another culture? True, go to England on a US tour-group tour and you see the culture. But, you eat at McDonalds, sleep at a Hilton, and watch CBS and CNN on TV (oh, and travel on a Greyhound bus). Travel is different. You give control of your life over to the people that live where you are visiting. You trust them to take you in and keep you safe. They trust you to follow their lead. And it is all good. I want that. I want the adventure of meeting a stranger who will guide me into their culture. Show me what it is like to be an outsider to the US looking in and see what I've been missing all these years. Give me a life lesson that I will be humbled by and learn from.

We're all part of something bigger. Right now it's 11:47 in my time zone. Everyone else in my family has gone to sleep except for me - this probably includes my cousins in other time zones as well (except those in Las Vegas). The "world" around me is assuming that it is night and everyone is going to bed. However, a mile from here, the night shift workers are less than one hour into their shift. A country away from here, it is thirty degrees warmer/cooler (depending which direction you travel). Across the globe, a woman is preparing rice for a noon meal for her children. Somewhere else, a young boy looks up at the sky while tending to a field. Somewhere else, an elderly man holds the hand of his dying wife with his children looking on. This is life at its most basic levels of survival, and I want to take part in that.

There is a give and take in life however. Would I give up my nice comfortable bed? Not easily. Change my diet to suddenly eat red meat again? I'd rather go to India and blend in with the Hindi. Eat a raw seal? I already eat raw tuna. I call that sushi! I eat wasabi too. It's my preferable condiment, along with soy sauce. At the end of the day, even if it's the worst day of my life, would I give up the creature comforts I've grown accustomed to in the US? Maybe not, but I wouldn't know until I've tried.

I'm ready to try something new. I've been ready since I knew that I finished college. For so long I've lived by the ideals I and my relatives have created for me, and never really got the chance to see who I really am. Now, I'm discovering a new side to me. I'm discovering that adventure really does exist outside of movies - you just have to allow yourself to give control of your life momentarily over to someone completely different from you. Allow yourself to immerse into something new. That's an adventure.

Now to find that call to prayer...

posted by Amanda @ 11:33 PM