Emma Gingerich: Breaking Amish interview

[December]

On 2/22/2016 at 0:24 PM, FlamingFundie said:

I find the Amish culture (from an English POV) to be incredibly fascinating. I know all facets of society have their skeletons in the closet, but honestly the Amish I come into contact with either are incredibly awesome or know really REALLY well how to hide it. 

That said, can someone clue me in a bit on something? My husband's family used to host exchange students every year, mostly from Germany as that is my husband's family's heritage. Anyway, the last German girl they hosted had a friend visit her here in the states. I drove them to a local mall for some shopping, and on the way we passed several Amish buggies. Very common here in my area, so I didn't think much of it. But these girls whipped around and got all excited about seeing real Amish! You would have thought they were preteens that just caught Justin Beiber walking in their neighborhood! I was caught so off guard that I didn't think to ask why they were so geeked about seeing a real Amish family. Suddenly I was the coolest person in the world to them because I was driving them by Amish communities. lol

And I agree with a PP who mentioned that he/she thinks sometimes Amish talk German/Penn Dutch around us English just so we don't know what they are saying, haha! Makes me feel a little self-conscious when a group of Amish girls are in front of me at the Tasty Freeze, giggling and speaking another language...

I was taking a road trip with a college friend who was from China. We went through a part of southern New York State where there are some Amish, and I pointed out the traffic signs with the buggys on them. She'd never heard of Amish people before and when I explained she was fascinated. So we wasted like 90 minutes driving around the middle of nowhere until we passed some Amish men driving a buggy. She was so excited I thought she was going to just bail out of my car and run after them  

My experience with Amish people has been okay. I used to buy from them at a farmer's market and they were nice (except when people tried to snap photos of their kids, but that's completely understandable). For the most part, they've just seemed very apprehensive. Then again, I've also run into many while out on photography excursions so I get it, even though I've always been careful to avoid shooting photos in their direction.

[quiversR4hunting]

9 hours ago, OnceUponATime said:

Plus then you have things like Amish romance novels (because that is a genre, I'm not joking Amazon has over a thousand of the things for your kindle).

guilty! I read a lot of the Amish "Christian Fiction" novels because they usually aren't overly gushy over romance but they usually have a little intrigue of the family background. Oh and I can usually read one in 2 days during my semester breaks before going back to reading textbooks.

I have really enjoyed Linda Castillo's series with Kate Burkholder as a lead character. Kate is a sheriff in a rural area and solves crimes. They have a lot of murder and psychos in this little area!   where the books take place. I love a good mystery book.

[OnceUponATime]

Just now, quiversR4hunting said:

they usually aren't overly gushy over romance but they usually have a little intrigue of the family background.

that's true. and they aren't verbal porn either. Zondervan published quite a lot back when I was younger. That was an "approved" publisher when I was young so I had read all the books in my local library published by them.

[Peas n carrots]

I'm fascinated with Amish as well - I come from a place with lots of Mennonites but no Amish. My Mennonite friends were completely modern - only a few older women wore the kapps. My best friend had Amish family in Kentucky if memory serves and she would complain about the time her family visited them and the lack of TV she had to endure lol.

In the past few years Amish have been moving into an area about 90 minutes drive from where I grew up. It's interesting that the community seems to be taking odd and the locals have embraced them.

http://journalstar.com/news/local/pawnee-city-proud-to-call-amish-friends/article_f7640d8f-bc30-5d20-abce-7a9da17af965.html?mobile_touch=true

[Iamhispurity]

Well no, there are no Amish in Germany. The closest we get is conservative Brethren or Mennonite (look wise). And some people I know over here really idealise that technology-free life.