***
The fall out from sending the Easter cards out has been quite emotionally draining. The thing is that I sent cards to all the relatives (although a cousin moved and I have to resend his card). The ones in Seattle that were at my aunt's Easter gathering, along with my brother there, seemed to mention the cards to my brother. The thing is that a lot of this is going on under the table as far as my brother's relations to me.
So the day after Easter that brother sent out Easter greetings to our other brother and I and the wording of it felt like a tacit referal to my cards sent to everyon but my brothers. There is something about that brother that scares me and I just react. I don't understand it, but I do. But he never, ever does anything I suggest, even if it is just and related to the inheritance, so he withholds things from me, and then at other times acts so benevolently (towards me and out other brother at the same time always), which makes it looks like he's doing so much and we are beholden to him and he should be beyond criticism. I don't buy it though, and I see that as pure manipulation.
But when I get cornered like the situation about the Easter cards I just freeze and do his very bidding. It's so scary and I just want out, but I can't completely. I said I would do the cookbook and I'm going to finish it. I'm prepared for that brother to tear it apart or else just not even show interest in it at all, even thoug some of the recipes in it would really just be of interest to him, because they would be later date ones that mom would have made when he would have been there and me and our other brother living far away.
I just can't stand this part of the relationship, though, and I don't expect anyone else to understand it, although it's possible that maybe one of my cousins might understand a little where I'm coming from. That's not for sure, but that would be the most likely possibility that I know of. Otherwise it would have to be a psychologist that would have to be the other one to understand what I'm talking about. I swear that brother is wicked and I am really seriously doubting his faith right about now.
But back to the text...
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"Extending upon there earlier work on a third-culture perspective... Hammer, Gudykunst, and Wiseman (1978) attempted to empirically determine the behavior dimensions of intercultural communication effectiveness. Hammer et al. (1978) surveyed 53 American students who had lived in another culture and asked them to rate the importance of 24 behaviors in terms of their intercultural effectiveness. A factor analysis of these ratings revealed three dimensions: (1) the ability to deal with the psychological stress, (2) the ability to communicate effectively, and (3) the ability to establish interpersonal relationsips." (p. 54-55)
Continuing with our earlier approach...
1) The only two times I ever remember experiencing psychological stress while living abroad were regarding a) the men in S. Korea, which I descussed in my last post, and b) regarding the workplace in the Vienna mission, which consisted of mostly fellow Americans, and all conservative Evangelical Christians. So why there should be psychological stress in the Vienna mission does not make sense in the usual culture shock way of looking at things. Why would I have culture shock around my own people? Isn't that strange? Of course, it comes down to, then, the type of organization and/or how they treated me specifically.
2) In Vienna I was able to communicate rather well because I had studied some German in college, had studied German in W. Berlin, had lived (and worked as a short-term missionary) in in the Vienna area for a couple months prior to coming to work with the Vienna mission. I started attending an Austrian church about 2 months or so after arrival in Vienna. I would say my German was low intermediate when I arrived in Vienna but was advanced by the time I left. But even when my language wasn't all that great I was not bashful about speaking and so I was willing to compensate if I had to with body language and the like.
3) I established several relationships while in Vienna, which is rather amazing considering how difficult the mission made it for me by moving me around. The thing is that I've always been very good at taking initiative (although with my poor health I'm limited now on what I can initiate).
***
This next set of quotes comes from the results of the study, which was a questionnaire given to 57 Japanese universities who were studying in the United States. Similar to the prior studies, these results are presented as factors (results of factor analyses of the answers). Here's the breakdown in this study.
"Factor 1. The abilities having high loadings (i.e., over .50) on this factor were: to deal with communication misunderstandings (.65), to enter into meaningful dialogue (.56), and to deal with unforeseen problems (.54)... Factor 1 was labeled the Ability to Communicate Interpersonally." (p. 59)
I don't remember any real miscommunications in Austria. When I was studying in W. Berling there was a time, though that had me shaken up. I rented a room from a lady and one time the shower needed fixing and she told me not to use the shower until she told me. I understood just fine but I thought the shower was fixed and it wasn't fixed yet and I took a shower and she yelled at me and when I went to my classed I was so upset I thought she was going to kick me out. I came home after classes and apologized very profusely, but she acted like she'd forgotten already. So that really was a misunderstanding situation, although it ended all right, thankfully.
I had many meaninful dialogues in German in Austria, so I won't even try to relate them here, but there were a lot of them. I'm trying to think of unforeseen problems in Austria. I can think of a couple when I was in W. Berlin, but not in Austria. In W. Berlin I needed new contact lenses and I had insurance so it only costed me $15 for new ones and my optometrist sent them to me there in Berlin. When I went to pick them up in customs, though, they wanted to charge me some humongous import tax and they wouldn't believe me that we in America had insurance for contact lenses and they really only cost me $15. I was pretty broke and I couldn't afford such a huge fee. Finally they believed me and let me pay the lesser import tax, but that took some doing, and I did it all in German, I might add, which isn't bad for someone in only advanced beginning level German.
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"Factor 2. The second factor accounted for 18% of the common variance. The abilities that had high loadings on this factor were: to deal with changes in life-styles (lading = .83), to deal with interpersonal conflict (.73), to deal with the pressure to conform (.58), and to deal with anxiety (.55). The first three abilities seem to suggest the ability to adjust to different, and sometimes hostile, social settings. If we recognize that the confrontation of different cultural orientations can be anxiety-producing, the high loading of the ability to deal with anxiety is consistent with the above interpretation. Factor 2, therefore was labeled the Ability to Adjust to Different Cultures." (p. 59-60).
I quoted the whole paragraph here because I find it particularly on-target for what I need to address. The military chaplain explicitly put the blame for my problems on the external culture, namely Austria,... Vienna. But where I was having such high pressure to conform from the whole time I was there was from the mission. Where my anxiety came from was from the workplace and problems like inexplicable actions of my computer or other employees who were unresponsive and made doing my job particularly difficult... while people around me seemed so calm and reassuring like nothing was unusuall and nothing was happening, and it seemed like I was the only one experiencing these things. I never had anything like that outside the workplace. Everything in Vienna and Austria worked as it should and the Austrians were all perfectly responsive as they should be, within reason, as anybody should be.
But how can this be? The mission is my people! They were almost all Americans like me and Conservative Evangelicals like me. And I'd worked in other East European missions and never experienced anything like this before. But the mission was definitely a foreign culture to me. And the thing was that it was a socially engineered culture, not a natural one. So it didn't necessarily operate by the usual social laws one might expect. I think one had to have spy training to figure them out very well, or at least be amenable to spy tactics. I wasn't. I was, and am, theologically opposed to a lifestyle of deception.
***
"Factor 3. The third factor accounted for 15% of the common variance in the abilities items. The three abilities having high loadings (i.e., over .50) on this factor were: to deal with difficulties (loading = .83), to deal with different political systems (.55), and to deal with social alienation (.52). ... Factor 3 was labeled the Ability to Deal with Different Societal Systems." (p. 60)
This one is different than any of the others so far. As far as dealing with difficulties, I've felt as an adult that I was raised with a disadvantage in this area, because I didn't really know how to defend myself. I did in isolated incidences, but not in larger more threatening situations. So I was pretty wimpy in my handly of the Vienna mission situation. Probably my best bet to have stood up for myself is to have counteroffered the military chaplain when he wanted to send me to the States to his choice of a location and instead to to my family and my primary care doctor and see what he thinks about my psychological condition. That would have been a lot better, although they might not have agreed to it if they thought I was a wild card, which I was.
But then I would have had to start back at square one to try to figure out how to reach my professional goals, and there weren't many other missions and if my dad's job was the problem in the first place it wasn't going to get much easier.
I do know that later on I did a pretty good job of hiding my thoughts because when they sent me home I learned to hide my real thoughts. Not that I would lie, just that I would smile and go along with what I could and just not let on regarding any issues that I disagreed about so they didn't really understand what was holding me up and clear to the end they didn't know. So I became very good in that way with dealing with difficulties at the mission. But that's not what is meant in factor 3, I don't think.
To give an example of the political aspect of what I felt was going on, I was having a hard time applying for an American Express card. How things worked was my mission deposited money into my U.S. bank account and then I could write a check to an Austrian account. But I to apply for the American Express card I needed to use the American account. So we went round and round about it. (I have written record of it I'm looking at correspondence as I write this.) Then mom and dad came to visit in early 1989 towards the end of my time in Vienna and they went with me and Dad talked to them and they fixed the problem immediately. I fumed under my breath and approached dad about it, asking how he was able to do it. He said it was because he was a man that often men are treated differently. But this was Austria, an enlightened country! That seemed strange to me and I was more inclined to believe that his influence from his work position was at play. I'd never before had problems in Austria because I was a woman! And I'd never heard of anyone else ever having a problem with that kind of thing either. Well, I don't know how well I dealt with that difficulty, but my correspondence sounds like I was dealing with it reasonably, like I was doing the right thing, although I wasn't being forceful, if that's what might have been more appropriate. The thing was though, that AmEx was saying my US bank wasn't responding to their requests. So then how could dad get me an account? That is pretty strange, if they needed information direct from my US bank and they still didn't have it but dad could get them to open my account. I believed them that they needed that information.
As to political systems, all of us in the Vienna mission had to deal with Eastern European countries. And certainly I lived in Russia, including the last 6 months before the putsch. We had to deal with border guards. One funny situation was when I was in Russia. Since I owned my condo, around 1993, I got an invitation to vote just like everyone else. So I went to the school and I voted. It was a confidence vote for or against Yeltsin and his Duma. The next time I had to go to the local OVIR (foreign passport office), most likely in preparation for a trip, I mentioned voting and I was told I didn't have the right to vote. Oops! Well, I wasn't punished, or anything and they understood I guess it was just an accident and not a malicious act or something. She wanted to know how I voted, though. I had a pretty good relationship with the government.
See, that was one of my major beefs with the mission, not that you have to be all cozy with the government, and I wasn't necessarily best friends, but I had a couple translating jobs for them too and I worked for a couple towsnman teaching English for a while. I wasn't bound to them, but they respected me and I didn't hide things from them. Everyone knew that I was a Christian, but when I taught I was a professional teacher. There were a few times when students asked questions when faith came up in class, but I didn't use the classroom as a pulpit, although there was one Russian highschool teacher who was a Christian who really did just that and I didn't agree with her. I guess if she wanted to lead and after school Christian club or something, great, but I'm not sure it's fair to all the kids who have to be there.
But the point is that I wasn't deceptive. And I wasn't with an organization so there wasn't anything to hide that way either. I had ministry, but it was the best when I had an office in the cultural center. I had the office all the time so I had a weekly women's class like a Through the Bible class, but one I just developed. A couple very talented artistic gals in a house church made a map of biblical times for me to use too.
Regarding social alienation, the Russian situation was interesting. I chose to alienate myself from Americans, so I was around Russians almost exclusively. When I was with Russian English teachers we spoke Russian and when I returned to the US for visits my English was rusty because I hadn't been teaching high levels of English, where you can use idioms freely and speak at a normal rate, and use longer words, for example. So it was a kind of reverse alienation, and I liked it, but I saw sort of a dead end as far as a career was concerned where I was.
In Vienna, it seemed that the missionaries were mostly alienated. That is, they hung around together and their English speaking church. And that was mostly it. So they were happy surrounded by Austria but living in an English-speaking milieu. I really didn't like that at all and I fought it my whole stay and towards the end it got the better of me and I actually started attending the English-speaking church but I felt like I'd betrayed myself and what I really believed in. After all, my B.A. was European Studies. This was part of how they just crushed my identity. Even so, they still didn't understand my values and what was going on inside me, so I gave in in my actions (at least in part), but they couldn't get me to talk. So that's where they really failed, is in not getting me to talk. And if anyone from the mission (especially the leadership) is reading this they're probably agreeing, I'm sure.
The thing about me and alienation is that on one hand I'm not afraid to be alone and I'm not afraid to be different. I don't necessarily want to be strange or wierd, but in certain situations one might be different and I'm okay with that, generally speaking, in principle. I think you have to kind of know if there are values involved and which values, then you have to deal with that issue. And you might not want to be different if it's offensive and it's some little stupid thing that's definitely not worth offending someone about, like showing the sole of one's feet or something. But then there's the issue of just not having other people like you around.
But, like in Russia, the people I found from America mostly were so disrespectful to the Russian culture, I thought that I prefered not to associate with them for the most part. I thought Americans come in like they have the answer to everthing and they don't even bother to trying to appreciate when Russia might have to offer them, because really, Russia has a lot.
You know where I really felt alienation? Working with the Vienna mission! I couldn't believe that I was the only one getting the treatment I did and at the end everyone to a child turned the cold shoulder on me and treated me like I didn't exist! Do you want to see alientation? It wasn't in Vienna, Austria the city or the country; no, it was in the mission and how they treated me. That's where I experienced alienation. How did I respond to alienation? Not very well, I'm afraid. I came home a broken person, but not just because of that; it was just one of the last straws. It was the whole culmination of 2 years with the mission. I can deal with alienation in Siberia, but not with the mission.
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"Factor 4. The fourth factor accounted for 10% of the common variance in the abilities items. Only two abilities items had high loadings on this factor: to maintain interpersonal relations with others (loading = .90) and to develop interpersonal relations with others (.53). As can be seen, this factor refers to the Ability to Establish Interpersonal Relationships." (p. 61)
I think I've already said about all I want to about this subject for now.
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Factor 5. The last factor accounted for 7% of the common variation in the abilities items. The three high-loading abilities suggest a fairly clear pattern for this factor: to work with other people (loading = .62), to empathize with another (.56), and to understand the feelings of another (.54). This factor appears to be capturing the Ability to Understand Others." (p. 61)I think I've had this, even in S. Korea, where I didn't know the language, even though I did begin to learn a little of it. I don't mean that I understood absolutely everything about every culture I ever lived in, but I don't think I understand absolutely everything about my own culture, because there are things about my own culture that don't have anything to do with me. But the things that did concern me I think have good understanding of people. Like the grassroots adult education group I was involved with in S. Korea. Or the environmental nonprofit I volunteered at in Korea (and that got me in a nonprofit newspaper). Or the Bethel Diakonia Werke in W. Berlin that I volunteered at when I was studying German in W. Berlin. There are a lot of example I could give showing that I have had a lot of understanding and empathy for people in different cultures and countries.
But I had a very hard time understanding understanding the people in the Vienna mission. I mean the people as a mission. How can it be that, people from my own country and from my own religious background could be the most difficult to understand? What was the problem? Doesn't that strike you as strange?
This is all for this article.
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4/22/12 Addendum
I'd just like to add something regarding my dad's explanation on the American Express resolution. Dad had very traditional gender views and our international perspectives differed a lot as well - his was a lot more conservative. Even in the area of language, he once got very upset when the Swedes that his Boeing team were meeting with (in Sweden) would sometimes speak Swedish and none of the Boeing team understood Swedish. When I heard this story I had little sympathy, but I can't remember if I went so far as to suggest that a company as large as Boeing could surely afford to send someone to language school (Berlitz comes to mind) or at the very least hire a translator.
At any rate, for the most part Austrians were known for being meticulous as to attention to detail and the following of protocol and rules, and I think that a banking institution would be a close second up there with government agencies in this. Unless AmEx had heard from my bank in the States since I last communicated with them, it doesn't make sense how my dad could have come away with everything resolved. I had no indication that my bank had been heard from, however, and neither the bank nor my father mentioned anything of that nature.
My inkling is that if dad was able to use some kind of clout (related to his work) he would want to sort of detract from that, and the male power logic was his effort in that direction.
The other option is that the documentation I was providing, including bank statements from my U.S. bank, actually were in fact adequate, and the bank should have accepted them without requiring the other information in the first place. In which case the bank was requesting extra information direct from the bank, which we were having trouble getting, and my father perhaps convinced them that that extra information was unnecessary, that the bank statement I'd provided were adequate. I thought that what they were requiring was part of their policies and unbendable. If that weren't the case, then what dad was saying about men having more clout may have indeed been true.
The question then arises, though, as to why the bank was requiring the extra documents from the U.S. bank. After dad resolved the problem I really felt like the bank was making it so hard for me to apply because of my dad, and then when he fixed just like that, my suspicions were strengthened. You never can be sure about these things though, and that's what's so difficult and frustrating.
Was AmEx requiring extra proof from direct from my U.S. bank because they didn't trust me? Did I seem untrustworthy? Was it because I got on some security list because of my dad? Was it because "I was a woman"? (dad's assertion) Presumably, if the cause was of my problem was just that I was a woman, than this kind of thing ran rampant among other women, and women were otherwise prejudiced against in the Austrian banking industry, at least they were in the 1980s. Was that so? Was that the way things were? I haven't studied that - yet - but I'd be surprised to find that this was so.
