Wilbert's onSite experience

Multiculturalism

In Quebec City, it is a very diverse culture. I know that it is true of anywhere especially in Canada, but a couple of days ago I was reminded once again of how there are so many cultures here. On Sunday, I had lunch at the church. It was a farewell for an old man who is going back to Haiti and also a fundraiser for the new church building. Normally, he visits his home country and then he comes back, but because he is 98 years old, he decided that he will stay in his home country telling people about the Gospel. He donated the meal that we had yesterday and asked people to give to the new church building (They are currently renting a community hall, they bought land, but they need money for the actual building.) The meal itself was different and it was very good. We had an Haitian style food, there is some foods that I tried for the first time, and I like it! There was also a praise & worship time. It was pretty cool to sing new songs, and many of these songs were in an African language. I think it was Swahili, but I am not sure. As we were singing, the song leaders urged us to stand up and dance! It was cool to see people in the congregation dance and sing new songs, and it was particularly neat to see the old man stand up and dance for a bit. At the end of the fundraiser, people donnated around 2080 for the new church building! It an incredible experience to see how God works in the hearts of people.

I also see a lot of multiculturalism at the school as well. We have a bunch of Spanish speakers in my class. I noticed when they are late for class, they would asked if they could join the class. If they are very late for class, they won't come in at all, and they will just wait outside until the next class starts. They have huge respect for the teacher. As a side note, Spanish is the second most used language after French in Quebec. We also have a student from Finland. He said that people in his culture like to be silent. He does no go up to random strangers and say hello, because the act of greeting a stranger would be considered rude, perhaps offensive. One of our missionary friends who were also in the conversation asked him how people make friends, if they do not talk to strangers. He said that as an adult, in order to make new friends is to get drunk at the local bar. Then all the social norms of being very individualistic would be ignored. We all came to the conclusion that our Finland classmate does not have many friends, but the friends that he does have are willing to die for him. I am learning something new everyday with our multiple different cultures within our class and reminding myself that we are in a Global Village.

Finally, Today I made some minor cosmetic changes to the blog. (Links are in a different color now, I got rid of the pink and purple.)

posted by Willyz @ 3:04 p.m.