Cross-Cultural Experiences

My family moved to Sweden in March 1994. We moved to Soderhamn, where we were the only native English speakers. We knew no Swedish. This led to several interesting and very humorous experiences in the three and a half years we lived there.

Our first trip to the grocery store was memorable. Being fresh off the farm, my dad was still wearing his cowboy boots, cowboy hat and Dickies overalls. This caught the attention of many Swedish children who could not believe that the iconic American cowboy was there in their small town grocery store. Also, did I mention that my family is from Texas?!? This means one thing, that we are loud. So there we were, loud Texans in a very quiet, docile Swedish super market. No, those are not crickets you hear, it is my loud Texas family.

Since our first 24 hours in Sweden had already been filled with strange food, my parents attempted to buy things that were familiar to us. Tony the Tiger was one of them. I had never eaten Frosted Flakes in my life, and did not intend to start then, regardless of that Tiger's smiling face. I think that box of cereal was still in our cabinet when we moved. But I digress.

Not being able to read the language meant that my parents had to use other clues to figure out what things were. So, naturally, when my mom saw a carton with a purple woman on it, she assumed it was grape juice. When the contents were poured into a juice glass, it came out white. Since it was clearly not grape juice, she concluded it was milk and promptly poured it on my brother's cereal. It came out chunky though, so it clearly was not milk. Plain yogurt? Wrong again. It turns out that we had stumbled across a Swedish product called Fil Mjolk. Slightly soured thickened milk that tastes great with granola or jam. I eventually developed a taste for it, but at the time I could not help but long for normal American milk on my cereal.

Where exactly am I going with this? Well, in a mere four days 13 of us from OU RUF will board a plan for Trujillo, Peru and have our very own South American cross cultural experiences. Only two of us (present company excluded) speak any notable Spanish, so the language will be a barrier. I am excited to see what God has to teach us about the Peruvian people, and to see how His kingdom is growing in other parts of the world.

But I am also very excited to see what is in the purple cartons in Peruvian grocery stores.