Culture Shock

If any of you have ever been to another country, then you most likely have experienced culture shock in some form or other. For me, I have experienced more culture shock when traveling to completely different cultures, like Kenya and Bahrain, then I have when traveling to other western countries. As a young adult, there are definitely challenges to living in a completely different culture, but, can you imagine going to a completely different culture as a 3 or 4 year old?

Case in point: I walked into KG1A yesterday. (You will recall several months back that I absolutely hated teaching these children because all they ever did was hit each other! However, now I have them eating out of the palm of my hand.) Anyway, there was a new student in this class. Her father is Bahraini, but her mother is American and they just moved here from America. You can imagine that she most likely spent more time speaking English in America than she did Arabic. But can you imagine being so young and being thrust into a pre-school where the main language is Arabic? I feel bad for the kid! I got her to stay in the class for about 2 minutes at first. (You will also recall that I have experienced kinder escaping from the classrooms here!) She ran out because she's the only one in the class with lighter-colored hair and light eyes, and all the other children were staring at her. Poor kid! So, I went back out and found her and I told her that I was American too and she could come into class, because all I can speak is English! So eventually she came in and started to interact.

Let's hope the sweetie-pie does ok. She's in my favorite KG class, and they have all stolen my hearts, so I hope she will warm up to them too.