The volunteer teachers who go to Belize with PathLight are asked to read Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot – And Cold – Climate Cultures. This short and simple book is a great primer for people who want to travel to a foreign country and not let their cultural naiveté make total idiots of themselves.

Lanier offers a simplistic division between hot and cold climate cultures. She walks the reader through the differences that exist between the cultures, such as perceptions on time, relationships, communication styles, hospitality, etc. This is a simple book with broad generalizations, but it’s an excellent book for a beginner to read because it’s so easy to grasp the dichotomy that Lanier creates.

This is not a book with scholarly ambitions. It’s not trying to be all things to all people. Anybody with extensive cross-cultural experience will find it too simple and thus frustrating (I often found myself wanting to elaborate in more detail something that Lanier wrote). But it is easy and approachable. And at just 128 pages, it’s a great way to prepare for a short visit overseas.