Riding the buses

Tuesday I had to be at Sardis church for breakfast and planned to get the only bus that comes out this part of town, and stops near the church, to head into 'downtown' Asheville.  In the end someone drove me in via an errand at the bank (we went in but they have drive thru banking facilities here!)

I pottered around the downtown, it felt abandoned by day to day shoppers - great for arty types and quirky restaurants but lacking the things that would draw locals in regularly, so understand when my lift giver had said she hadn't been in the town centre for several years.

I found my way to the bus station and with my bus so long to wait for another plan emerged, and that led to several bus changes and riding the bus the long way out in the opposite direction (rather than a long wait out in the sun) before actually reaching the place where the locals shop at a retail park.

Buses are levellers - we wait together at the stop and we have to share the same space on the journey - no  hiding away in our own tin cans.  The services here are very limited but do serve some of the more vulnerable communities, as I rode the buses around a full lap the pattern of ethnicity of those riding with me changed. As did the view of the housing, the areas we travelled through.

There is something important in being able to explore a community with eyes open to the world around us, something that concentrating on driving I wouldn't have been able to take in. What do we need to take time to notice in our own communities, but familiarity or busyness distract us from? It might not need a bus ride, but maybe we need to take eyes off the road we are travelling and onto the people we travel amongst.

Oh and though Asheville routes are few enough and infrequent, their buses do have a cyclists dream - a fold down frame on the front that can hold up to 3 bikes...

Culture Gaps

The famous quote (debatable tough who said it according to various websites) that Britain  and USA are 'two nations divided by a common language'.  How very true, but there are culture gaps way beyond what words we use.

I arrived at my temporary home in Asheville, North Carolina almost midnight on July 1st, the 2nd was unpacking, a walk about the area (shocking the natives and discovering that sidewalks are considered optional on the edge of the city) then collected, taken for lunch and to visit the churches.

So Thursday it was time to get deeper into the culture - a trip to the local Bi-Lo supermarket that I had located in my wanderings the day before.  I am not home alone as my exchange partner's family are still here, and the grown daughters will be most of my stay, though they are busy with work.  So I am not shopping for full food, so for the needed exercise, and leaving the car adapting for a day with company, I set out with my back pack for the less than a mile hike along the verges.

I looked closely up and down all the aisles - found that here Jif is something to eat not a cleaning brand and 'dirty rice' is a good thing - and lots of differences as well as similarities. One thing I was hunting for was the equivalent to squash - the drink not the vegetable.  At lunch the previous day it came up in chat after I said I didn't drink tea etc. I thought that knowing it was called cordial in Australia (and they had Americanisms there) this 'bilingualism' would be the key. But still no comprehension.

Have you ever tried to explain something so basic and day to day to someone with absolutely no concept of what you are talking about, and you have no tangible example to offer?  It is incredibly hard, and it strikes me that this is what we encounter as we speak of our faith experiences - even to other Christians half the time, let alone the rest of people.

It is also the same with health experiences that you are living with and others can only look on - they may think they understand the words you are using but the concept is beyond them, not out of their failure to try, but just beyond their reach.  For example in mental health issues we use words that others recognise as sadness, bad days, low times - but mean something so much deeper, longer and tougher.

It seems to me that we don't need to cross the pond to find ourselves 'divided by a common language'.
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PS - in case you were wondered, the shop search showed nothing like our squash,  the nearest thing, tucked in a corner of an aisle, being a powder to add to water, but means making up a full 2 quart batch at a time.  Otherwise you drag home big bottles of ready to drink stuff.