Last July at Wheaton I had my first exposure to ?ELIC people?; I hadn?t yet been overseas or met my teammates, but at Wheaton I spent a month in class with a group of ELIC teachers who had mostly all been overseas for a year or more. My initial impression of the group was that they were a little weird. A lot of them had? strong personalities. I got along with them, and made friends; but sometimes I secretly wondered if these people went overseas because they didn?t fit in in America.
I had completely forgotten these initial impressions of ELIC-ers and happily went off to Wheaton this summer for my second round of summer classes. I immediately felt completely at home amongst my classmates; we had all experienced similar things living in Asia for the past year and we all needed and appreciated the community that we had at Wheaton.
Then I heard a funny story that jogged my memory. Sally told me that when her friend was being trained to work in the Wheaton bookstore for the summer, her boss told her, ?Watch out for those ELIC folk. They?re a little kooky.?
And suddenly I remembered that they ARE a little kooky. Excuse me, we are a little kooky. Having lived overseas, where we most definitely did not fit in, we sometimes forget that we are supposed to try to fit in here. We forget that Americans generally don?t wear the same clothes three days in a row. We have become a little more ?polychronic? - meaning, we don?t stress about time or schedules or deadlines. We?ve learned to be ridiculously flexible.
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One afternoon at Wheaton I was reading on the back step of my apartment building when I saw and heard an explosion in the garage of a house across the street. I?m not built for emergencies; I sat frozen for several seconds trying to figure out what had happened and if what I heard was laughter or screams. Then I bolted inside and knocked on Greg and Bethany?s door. ?I think there was an explosion across the street,? I said, and Greg shot across the street while Bethany and I called Ginger, a nurse. Then all of us crossed the street, where Greg was talking on the phone with 911 . A girl about my age sat on the ground, all her skin singed black and purple, crying in broken English, ?Oh my God, I am burning alive??
Her father, torso burned red, was crying in some eastern European language, and her sister, the only one unharmed, couldn?t get out the English to explain what had happened. We began pouring water on the burn victims and cutting their clothes off.
Since that day, I?ve been more sensitive to violence in movies and on tv, especially violence that involves fire or explosions. But really, there?s just one recurring thought that I have about it all, and it has to do with the way we respond to crisis situations. I was tongue-tied and paralyzed - that was my response. The immigrants - who did know some English - couldn?t muster enough of their second language to explain what had happened. Their emotions came out in their first language. When we face a crisis situation, we naturally speak - perhaps, can only speak -in our first language. That?s the thought I keep having. And related to that, what is my ?first language?? I think it should be prayer. But I think it might be fear.