During one of our conference sessions today one of our leaders (from the UK) named Gerard (pronounced Jarrod in non-American countries) had an important announcement. He told our group to come back from lunch 5 minutes early for a very urgent announcement.

This seemed a bit ominous… There was no further explanation.

The twenty-six of us attendees left the conference session, went about our merry way, ate our lunch and returned 5 minutes early as we had been told to.

Gerard looked very solemn and a bit disturbed as he walked to the front podium. With obvious remorse he began to tell us that he had some very bad news. I thought someone must have been in an accident or something.

He said, "Well, I didn’t want to tell you this before lunch because I wanted you to enjoy your meal, but…"

–Oh, thanks a lot, Jarrod. That’s just a marvelous, idea…

"…it seems we have some very bad news. We have been trying to work this issue out, but it looks like our conference can no longer be held at this hotel…"

–What’s going on here? Not at this hotel?! Why?

"Sarah (another conference leader) has been arguing with the hotel staff for an hour, but there has been some big mixup and another conference is being held here. Unfortunately, it gets worse…"

–Worse?

"…we thought we could still stay here at the hotel, but we cannot. We have to move to another hotel that we have used in the past up near the Night Market."

–We can’t stay at the hotel! Wha…wha…what?!! We have to move again… Oh, Christa is going to blow a gasket! Don’t make eye contact with her! It’s better that way…but what did we do wrong? Why are we being evicted?! It was the buffet. Westerners eat a lot more than Asians do. They must not have predicted how much it would cost to feed us so the hotel is making up this excuse about another conference to avoid the embarrassment of calling us pigs… It must be the buffet…it must…

"So, we need for each of you, after this last session, to go up to your room and collect your things. We will be meeting in the lobby at 5:30 to move to the new hotel. Some of your children are scheduled to be swimming just before that time. If you would like you may let them swim until the time we will be leaving…or you can get them immediately after this session. If you single folks can help us tear down the posters in this room after you’ve finished packing that would be helpful…"

–Would they really boot us out for eating too much in the buffet? I can’t believe they would just cancel our reservations and kick us out like this…Preposterous!

As I was running through the scenario in my head, the session speaker came up to the front podium. Jarrod was gone. He just walked out of the room. There was an absence of leadership suddenly. There was a void. The entire room looked shell-shocked. There was some mumbling, some looks of panic, curiosity, and even outrage. I don’t think one person was actually paying much attention to the speaker. The wheels were turning and we were all planning how quickly we could pack up our belongings. How long would it take to re-pack all eight suitcases?

–I should see if Christa wants to go pick up our laundry before we move across town. No, I’ll just wait a few minutes…Why are we still having this stupid session?! No one is going to be able to pay attention to any of this…don’t they know what we’ve been through?

The speaker said, "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah," and, "blah." And then she said something I heard.

–Did I hear that right?

"I remember one time when we had plans to move to a new apartment in China we had all our plans made and everything ready to go and at the last minute a Chinese official came and told us, you can’t move in to that apartment, someone was killed in that apartment." (Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.) "And that’s why I am pleased to be telling you that we will not be making you all move to the new hotel across town…"

–we will not be….move to the new hotel…

–we will not…MOVE!

Everyone laughed and sighed and gasped.

It was all just a hoax.

We had just been duped into believing that we were moving hotels as an OBJECT LESSON! I couldn’t believe how badly I had fallen for the prank. The whole point of the story about changing hotels was leading up to this.

It was enacted (very believably) to give us a sense for how different life in Asia can be on a day-to-day basis.   The session’s title was, "Life in Asia," after all.  I should have seen it coming.

The point:  you have to be flexible or you will break. For the rest of the session we had a de-briefing time to discuss how we had reacted to the news that we would be moving hotels unexpectedly and with no real explanation. We talked about issues of authority and also what a proper response would be in such situations.

This object lesson was a good reminder to me that we will be living in cross-cultural situations that may make little or no sense to us (often!) and that unpredictable change is par for the course.

Those in the duped category (more men than women) were all sorely relieved that we could keep our suitcases unstressed for another week or so. And I was especially relieved to discover that I could continue filling my mountainous plate at the sushi bar! (But I’m still going to get that Jarrod fellow!)