International Diversity

This weekend I attended a baby shower on board. It was for the Koontz family who are expecting their fourth child in August. They are also my adoptive family (long story short, I adopted myself into their family). In many ways it was like any other baby shower: ladies, food, and lots of pink and blue balloons. The neat part of the entire shower was how many countries were represented at the shower. There were at least nine that I counted: the United States, Canada, Brazil, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ghana and South Africa.

And I realized how international so much of our life is simply because of the people within our community. I had "Happy Birthday" sung to me in 8 different languages on my birthday. At first it was just a nice way to let crew members express themselves in the native language. But then it became an adventure to see how many different languages I could hear in one day. So my birthday was celebrated in English, Afrikaans, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Filipino.

Another time our international diversity is visible is at Academy events. There are about 50 children on board and it is always amazing to see how culturally diverse these children are. My bunk mate Elizabeth, who is currently the preschool teacher and will serve as the first grade teacher next year, realized that her class of four students will be from four different countries next year. What makes this special, and also a bit difficult, is that English is not the first language for many of the kids or their parents.

Patience and understanding are required ingredients in our international community!