07.17.08

Tri-Cultural Windows

Posted in Ancona, church, culture, photography at 5:46 am

A friend of Marcus recently took us on a guided tour of Ancona. I’ve lived here for over two years and hadn’t ever done any kind of tourist things, and was kind of looking forward to learning some new things.

As we winded our way through some of the historical streets on Ancona, we came upon a building I had driven by, but hadn’t ever noticed. It’s very ornate, and over the years has been the home of many rich merchants. Our tour guide explained a very unique feature of the windows. First, they have rounded arches, which are very typical of Roman architecture. But they are also double windows, which are typical of Venetian architecture. But they also have pointed tops, which are typical of Arabian architecture.

Ancona has been influenced by all kinds of cultures over the centuries. The ruling power of the time left its mark on the economy, the language, the government, or in this case, the architecture.

I immediately thought of the church. Right now, we have Italians, Americans, and Romanians who are all active participants. We’ve had Irish and French visitors. Sometimes the cultures clash a bit, but for the most part they all come together and make a really beautiful thing.

07.12.08

A tiny taste of racism

Posted in Ancona, culture, family at 10:19 am

We’re in the middle of an apartment search. Unfortunately, our landlord needs her apartment back and has given us six months to get out. It’s not the best timing, but we’re doing our best to stay positive about things.

A realtor called me back today. I had called to inquire about an apartment, and she had a few others that might work. She described several which sounded good, and she said she would contact the landlords for me to set up the appointments.

An hour or so later she called. One of the landlords was nervous renting to a foreigner, and wanted to know what I did for a living and would only make an appointment if I could show proof of income. Neither of these things is illegal, unless she only requires these things from foreigners.

Neither the landlord nor the realtor has ever seen me. My accent on the phone was enough to tip them off. Unfortunately, I’ve seen countless examples of racism here. I’ve been in many a conversation where the subject of “those darn stranieri” gets brought up. I usually listen and then point out that I, too, am a straniero. At which point they quickly point out that I’m not the kind of straniero they’re talking about. They mean those stranieri that don’t have the same color skin as they do.

I know my little confrontration with racism was just that - very minor. And I imagine the landlord will apologize all over himself when they realize that they asked the “good kind of foreigner” for proof of income. But I can see where a bunch of seemingly little examples like this could build up over time and cause a whole lot of tension.

05.31.08

What was their name again?

Posted in culture, language at 12:14 pm

The Huxtables

There’s lots of American TV on here in Italy. We can watch Lost, sometimes just a few episodes behind (and dubbed into Italian). Heroes has also been dubbed. Lots of the Law and Order shows are on. And we also get the classics. Like The Cosby Show. Except it’s not The Cosby Show here. It’s I Robinson - The Robinsons.

Side note: Why was it called The Cosby Show if their name on the show was Huxtable?

So why did they change the name of the show (and the family) in Italian? I’ve heard several theories, but the most plausible is quite simple: Huxtable would be difficult to pronounce in Italian. The “H” is always silent in Italian, and is only used to change the sound of other letters. The “X” has a “Z” sound. And almost every word in Italian ends in a vowel sound (in English it ends in a vowel, but not a vowel sound).

But if you zoom out a little bit, you see how difficult it can be to take this American show, with all of its little cultural inside jokes, and transplant it into another place. And so if the show’s theme would be difficult to translate, just take the idea and put it into an Italian context. If the name’s too difficult, just change it.

Context is everything!

05.05.08

Vegetable Pizza that will change your life

Posted in Ancona, culture, friends at 9:27 am

Last week was Italian Labor Day, and we were so happy that a friend of our oldest invited us to spend the day with his family at their country home. It was actually just outside the city, but had the biggest yard that the kids ran and played in the entire day.

Our friends provided the first course (spaghetti al ragù), and everyone else brought the rest. Fava beans and pecorino cheese are a typical dish for Labor Day. There were lots of little pastries and deserts. And then there was the dish we brought, Vegetable Pizza. The kind with a biscuit crust and cream cheese and raw vegetables on top. Your average vegetable pizza.

Which was the strangest thing that our Italian friends had ever seen. Everyone stopped what they were doing to ask what it was, what was in it, how we made it. I was a little embarrassed, but kind of proud that my wife made the dish everyone was raving about. People clamored for seconds, and the compliments were flowing.

I know sometimes on the blog it may sound like I read things into everyday situations. But as I’ve now been here for three years, I’m beginning to learn that I really can’t take anything for granted. Just when I think I’m starting to figure things out, I find a new sub-culture or new area of life. A simple, common vegetable pizza is a wonderful, new creation taken out of its usual American context. One woman asked if it was safe to eat broccoli raw, and was excited to try it that way. Isn’t that something that you just assumed everyone knew? But every culture - even a seemingly-similar, Western European culture - is different in probably every way. And if I am wrong about Italians knowing that you can eat broccoli raw, can I really assume I know anything at all? Can I really assume how they see bigger subjects like church, grace, and truth?

The only thing I’m sure about … three years is only a good start in learning a culture.

04.18.08

Sergio the Barber

Posted in Ancona, culture, finances at 5:17 am

In fashion concious Italy, it’s hard to find a place to get a cheap haircut. I’m a “Great Clips” kind of guy in the US. I just want the hair to be shorter, and look somewhat like I didn’t cut it myself. I decided I was tired of paying €20 ($31) for a haircut, and a while back decided to try this barber whose shop is about a block away on my street.

And I met Sergio, an 82 year old Anconetano with a two-chair barber shop (but the second chair only holds the used drape cloths from the day).

He charges €6, moves as fast as an 82 year old can, and entertains me with stories about the war and “kids these days.” He uses an old fashioned straight razor to trim the hairs on your neck. His clippers look almost as old as he is. He’s left me in the chair, hair half cut, so he can go home and take his blood pressure medicine. There is hair from decades ago in every nook and cranny that his broom doesn’t reach. His nervousness about the immigration boom in Italy shows when he asks me in all seriousness “where they bury Chinese people when they die?”.

You can’t beat the price he charges. But for a foreigner like me, I can’t beat the language and cultural lessons I get when I’m in the chair.

04.16.08

The Vast Minority

Posted in Ancona, culture, family, kids at 11:41 am

Family Sizes in Ancona

I ran across a surprising statistic the other day. We’ve long known that our family size of five made us more than a little unusual here in Ancona. Now we have a handy graphic to prove it, published by the city of Ancona. So in a couple of months when the new baby is born, we’ll join the other 420 families with more than five people present in the home. Only 420 in a city of over 100,000! At our kids’ schools, the majority of people have one, two kids at the most. The national average is 1.2 kids per family.

But it’s not just statistics that show how children are viewed by some here. I had a conversation the other day with a woman a bit older than me. She was married with one kid and marveled at how young I am and how many kids we have (we get that a lot). And then she said to me that if she had it to do all over again, she wouldn’t have had any children. She told me her son tries her patience, and “if she knew then what she knows now…”

I was kind of shocked. Granted, there have been days when the kids are grating on my nerves. But to wish that they had never been born?!

I’m trying to figure out where this comes from. Some of it, at least in people I have talked with that “regret” having kids, is just plain selfishness. Some of it comes from an inability to provide every single thing the child could ever want, especially as the family grows. But other than those two things, I’m stumped. I love my kids! I have learned so much about myself, and they bless my socks off! It breaks my heart to hear people (one time, in front of their child) lament ever having kids.

Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift?
the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?

- Psalm 127:3 (MSG)

04.10.08

Practice Hospitality

Posted in culture, ministry at 5:17 am

Something that I really wasn’t aware of until we moved to Ancona, was how important hospitality is when you’re a missionary. We constantly have people in our homes, whether it’s church members, friends, or someone just passing through.

Our life in the US wasn’t like this at all. We rarely had people in our home. Part of the difference is cultural. In the US, you go out to eat with guests rather than make a big meal as is common here. But I think part of the difference is that hospitality is sort of going out of style. Our homes have become a little bubble that we live in, and we’d really rather not have anyone else in the bubble with us.

Paul says in the book of Romans that we are to “practice hospitality.” Making guests feel comfortable is supposed to be a part of a Christian’s life. The thing is, I don’t think hospitality comes naturally to some. I’m fortunate to have a wife who excels at this. People have said to us before that our home feels like a second home to them (and that’s all Heidi’s fault!).

So what do you do when it doesn’t come naturally? Maybe I’m taking a liberty with what Paul was intending, but I think we need to practice. We can’t learn if we don’t try. Start small. Have someone over for coffee. Invite a neighbor for a casual dinner. Volunteer to have Christmas at your house this year. The more we do it, the more natural it becomes. By inviting people into our “bubbles” they get to see what makes Christians tick. Sharing a meal brings an intimacy that isn’t found in day-to-day life.

Practice makes perfect.

04.07.08

We never start church on time

Posted in church, culture, ministry at 4:21 am

Our Sunday morning service starts at 11 AM. Well, it’s supposed to start at 11 AM. Yesterday I looked at the clock and around 11:30 we were sort of starting to think about getting things started. I used to get kind of annoyed by this. Italians are definitely less punctual than Americans, but not excessively so. Why is it that every week it was such a struggle to start at 11 AM?

And yesterday, I got it. As people arrive and start kissing and hugging and greeting one another, the noise level in the room grows. There’s laughter. There’s catching up. Yesterday there was even some crying as though people couldn’t wait to get in the door to unload. This place, or more accurately, these people, are a refuge from the day to day grind. So in a way “church” does start at 11:00. The part of church where people take care of each other. The singing and the preaching …. well, we get around to it eventually. It doesn’t make us lazy or sloppy or mean we don’t know how to tell time. I think it means we know what is important and what people really need more of.

03.05.08

Italian Superstitions

Posted in culture at 5:28 am

This one is one of my favorites. I’ve seen it done!

01.26.08

Watered-down Communion

Posted in church, culture at 10:04 am

Last night was the final night of the Ecumenical week of prayer that I mentioned earlier. The service included a lot of singing, some prayer, some short messages by area pastors and priests, and communion.

Well sort of. As an area pastor’s wife sang a beautiful, self-translated version of Adonai, we all came forward to receive a tiny cup of water. The program explained that the water was a symbol of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus who takes away our thirst, and of baptism.

But you see, it wouldn’t be possible for all of us to take communion together. The Catholics believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. The Protestants believe it’s a symbol of Christ’s body and blood. And some Protestants don’t feel like we should share communion with Protestants from other denominations. So what’s the end result? Communion that … isn’t.

Which I think sums up some of my problems with ecumenicalism in general. We pray for unity, we listen to carefully-worded messages imploring unity, we sing songs about being bound together. But we’re not. And I think most of us are to stubborn to shift our beliefs so that we could have actual unity. Or at least feel comfortable watching others live out their beliefs, even if they differ a bit from ours.