Sylvia's Journal

The 45 minutes of yoga every other day are noticeable, said my masseuse. The big knots are gone – all she needs to do is now is the weekly maintenance of loosening up tight muscles. I had a four handed massage that could have gone on forever.

From there I headed to M’s house all the way across town for a lunch she proudly presented as ‘not very Afghan.’ Indeed, I could have imagined myself somewhere around the Mediterranean – eating pizza and small fish fry her husband brought back from Nangahar. Only the sea and the white wine were missing.

I introduced Lego in this household and marveled at how the older boy put together a complex space craft in very little time. Dad is off to London next week and I suggested he check out the Lego section of toy stores, assuming he is supposed to bring something back for his two boys.

M. and her husband are the first Afghans with whom I am doing the MBTI. Just getting the 126 questions answered was not easy. Some of the questions are quite difficult to understand and hard for me to explain. Still, it has been an interesting exercise that is triggering some surprising conversations, especially about the preference of telling a polite lie versus an impolite truth. It is hard to ignore the cultural element in this.

I am looking forward to the feedback conversation I will have with the two of them sometime soon. Doing the MBTI with couples is a lot of fun. It’s not part of my job but opening unchartered territory for intentional exploration is something I so miss doing here.