As I considered this, I thought about how this same event will one day happen to all of us in a far greater measure. C.S Lewis points to this in his essay The Weight of Glory, where he encourages us to think about each other in a new way.

In the next couple of weeks, we are going to have our first visitors from home, coming out to our adoptive country. Dee’s mother, brother, and sister-in-law-to-be, will be on their way back from a trip to Australia, and on the way to Ireland will stop off with us in South Asia for a week.

As I mentioned recently, Dee and I had very different upbringings as regards travel. My father, being a language teacher, loved to bring us around Europe and the world, and some of my earliest memories are holidays in foreign lands. Even at a young age, our dad used to send us to ask for directions to shops etc., and try to remember what was said, or write it down… all in a language not our own. Learning to relate to different cultures has always been a part of my life, and maybe part of the reason that as a quiet, nerdy kid, my few friends in school or university were often the foreigners. I don’t know.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, is from rural Ireland, married to a farmer, and as far as I’m aware has never travelled outside of the British Isles. The other night, we were talking about her going to Australia, and even further, arriving into the chaos of South Asia. I mentioned to Dee that I just don’t have the framework to understand the manner of emotions that must course through one’s being, under the sensory assault of entering another culture for the first time.

After 60 years in one place, to suddenly be dropped into an overwhelming attack of chaos, noise, strong, unusual smells, language, vastly different architecture and urban planning (though planning might be a little strong of a word), and more chaos, is no small thing. I just can’t imagine what it will be like for her to experience something that intense for the first time, without any prior exposure to similar situations. It’s incredible really. One moment, you are in your own culture, not even noticing things around you, for you swim in it as a fish in water. A quick couple of flights away, and all of a sudden you are teleported into a whole new reality, where you notice everything, and have no idea how to interact with it.

In this new reality, there are many things the same. People are there, they still smile, frown, buy things, sell things, eat together. There are things that are similar, like food and buildings, and weather. They’re just altered somewhat, some slightly more intense, some slightly less. Then there are the things that are just plain different. Sights and sounds and experiences that you have just never encountered in your life.

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