“Which place was your favourite?”

Having lived in 5 countries growing up, this is a question that I get asked frequently. I always give them the same answer.

“It’s hard to say”

It’s a question that is just as hard to answer as if I were asked which one of my fingers I’d rather have cut off. How can you compare countries that are a part of you? You just can’t decide because there is nothing to compare.

For mono-culture kids (MCKs), it’s relatively easy for them to decide which place is their favourite, because they visit those places for only a short while. Some of the culture or food might appeal to them more in some countries/cities than others.

For us it is a little different. With each city or country we live in, that culture becomes a part of us – like freckles that appear on our skin when we’re in the sun.

The Native Foreigner

My mom recently told me that my little sister came home from school one day crying. She wanted to move back to Asia.

I don’t live in the same country as my parents and little sister – I’m in Canada for university. They’re in the US (for now, anyway).

My sister was born in the US (the same city she lives in right now) – she was there for all of 6 months before we were transferred to Japan. She, like my brother and I, is bi-ethnic (Caucasian mother, Asian father). She has been raised entirely in Asia (for 14 years) up until last Summer when my family was transferred back to the US.

She is a US-citizen, yet feels like a complete foreigner even at an international school. Her best friends refer to her as ‘the Asian’ and pull at their eyes – not to poke fun at her, more so as terms of endearment. She does not like it. At all.

As I Skype-d with her one evening I tried to tell her that it really isn’t a bad thing to be called out like that, that her friends weren’t doing it to hurt her feelings, that I miss living in Asia just as she does, and that in time she will come to love living in the US, just as she had in every country she’s lived in so far.

Then I introduced her to the term Third Culture Kid. She had no idea what that was, but I know that in time she will come to understand what all TCKs share – a sense of belonging in the fact that we don’t belong anywhere, but everywhere at the same time.

Becoming a TCK (Part 2)

“We’re moving to the Philippines”, my parents tell me.

Soon after the announcement, they started going through expat guides to the Philippines. “Did you know that classes start at 7am and get out at 1:45pm at the school you’re going to?”, “Did you know that we are going to have to have guards outside our house 24/7?”, “Did you know that we are going to have live-in maids and a driver?”.

No. I can honestly say that I had no idea what life in the Philippines would bring.

We arrived in the summer, the heat was intense and the humidity was almost unbearable. Immediately, my brother and I were signed up for tennis lessons at the Polo Club (didn’t know they played Polo – not the water kind – in the Philippines did you?), just like we had been in Japan. Except here, you don’t go around after you finish hitting around a basket of balls. No… ball-boys (men, really) run around for you. At first my brother and I would run after a ball if we missed it – feeling guilty that these adults were running around collecting our loose tennis balls for us (we had been used to getting them ourselves). After a while, it became normal to us – we no longer made any moves to collect the tennis balls. We fit right in.

(See Note 1 for another fun experience)

Lumpia

Enough about extra-curriculars. It’s time to talk about my favourite thing in the world: FOOD. I can’t even list all of the foods that I fell in love with while in the Philippines. A few highlights though… arroz caldo for breakfast, chicken adobo, beef tapa, lechon de leche, sinigang, garlic rice, lumpia, pandesal, taho… it’s making me homesick just thinking about it.

Taho

 

It took my family a little while to get used to the fact that we were never alone when we got home. We had two live-in maids, a driver, and three gun-packing guards that took 8-hr shifts guarding our home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This was common to every family in the compound (gated community). Our driver and guards were in constant contact with each other via walkie-talkies so that at all times, they knew where in the city we were. I didn’t think too much of it then. To me, they were a part of everyday life. Looking back now, the extent of security we had is sort of terrifying. Why were the guards and driver in constant contact when we were out? So that if we ever got kidnapped (as was not uncommon there) they’d know where to start looking.

Case-in-point: My friend’s brother was victim of an attempted kidnapping. Luckily a bystander was there to save him. Ever since, that bystander was hired as the kids’ personal bodyguard who accompanied them to school and wherever they went.

By this point I feel as though I’m painting a not-so-perfect picture of the Philippines. Don’t get me wrong – it’s an AMAZING place to live. It is always warm (sometimes overly so), the people are so friendly, and the food is fantastic.

I was half-way through the 8th grade (age 13) when came yet another life-changing announcement…

Note 1:
I took up horse-riding at the Polo Club, after falling in love with their horses. I had never ridden a horse in my life up until that point. I arrived at the stables, signed in with the office, walked outside, and a man (called a “groom”) comes with a horse (all tacked up) who gives me a leg up. He leads the horse with me on it to the riding area to meet my instructor. At the end of the lesson, the groom comes back, helps me off the horse, and I’m good to go home. As I understand it now, in North America, that is not what you do at all. You are expected to groom and tack-up your horse before and after your lesson. Not here in the Philippines. Some of my classmates (daughters of wealthy Filipino families) had their own horses, with their own grooms who they would call out to if they needed anything. “Groom! Bring me my crop, I forgot it”. Personally I thought it was quite rude – they hadn’t even bothered to learn their groom’s name! Don’t worry, this is not something I fell into doing – nor did I have my own horse!

日本

日本 (Japan)

Over the past couple of days, I (like many others) have been glued to my TV watching the news as pictures and stories come flowing in from Japan.

It made me feel sick. I could only think of all the people I know that are still there…

Japan is home to some of the sweetest, smartest people. It it devastating just watching the footage.

I am lucky in that all of the people I know are ok – still on edge, but ok.

They need all the help the world can give – please please donate to relief efforts!

“Caught between two worlds”

Children of diplomats displaced by strife often caught between two worlds

By Kevin Sieff

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 3, 2011; 12:57 AM

With each regime that teeters, each uprising that forces a U.S. embassy to be evacuated, more American diplomats, aid workers and their families seek shelter at a nondescript Falls Church apartment complex with a nondescript name: Oakwood. The only hint of its connection to international affairs is the United Nations flag flying overhead.

Most families are there to enroll their children in Northern Virginia’s smallest school district, Falls Church, and to wait for the world’s uprisings to subside before returning to their foreign postings or deploying to new ones. The surge of recent arrivals began with an exodus from Ivory Coast in January and was followed last month by a group from Egypt – 33 students and their families from Cairo alone. A wave from Libya began landing over the weekend.

During their stays at Oakwood, named for the national corporate housing chain that owns it, children leave each morning for classes at Falls Church schools. Parents take shuttles that run between the complex on North Roosevelt Boulevard and the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters.

“It’s like the State Department ghetto,” said Rob Rose, a development consultant who left Cairo for Falls Church with his wife, a U.S. Agency for International Development employee, and two daughters.

Such moves are jarring for students who are scrambled out of global hot spots and delivered to this placid corner of suburbia. Oakwood’s modern, furnished apartments are part of a complex of four brick buildings sandwiched between a cemetery and a busy street.

“Someone asked me the other day if I speak Egyptian. They ask if we ride to school on camels. I don’t think they really understand us,” said Hadley Rose, 13, who is in the eighth grade at George Mason High School.

Becoming a Third Culture Kid (TCK)

I wasn’t even in pre-school when I began my life as a TCK. Born and (barely) raised in Canada, I was off to the United States at age 3. My first ever memories are from the years that I lived in the US – Canada wasn’t even on my radar. As far as I was concerned, I was American (despite the parents telling me otherwise). We lived in one of the Southern states, so “y’all” and grits were a big part of my life. We lived in the US for all of 5 years. This brings me to age 8, if you’re doing the math. It was at this age when I received the worst news of my 8-year-old life: we’re moving to Japan. Little did I know, I would grow to love Japan and all the other countries I would live in. But as an 8-year-old with a best friend I’d had since I was 4… it was traumatizing. I was going to lose my friends, my home, my sports teams forever. I can still remember the day I called my best friend to tell her that I was going to be moving. I didn’t cry. I was strong. It wasn’t until I was actually in Japan that it hit me: I wouldn’t be returning home – this was not another vacation.

These people don’t speak English… they drive on the wrong side of the road! …But they’re really nice… and the food is amazing! Authentic ramen, gyoza, tempura, mmmmm…. I quickly fell in love with Japanese candy and snacks: onigiri quickly became one of my favourites. And the stationary… oh the stationary.

Luckily, having gone to an international school in the US, I had become somewhat accustomed to kids of all ethnicities. I didn’t know back then, but international schools are a God-send to TCKs. Other kids who are experiencing the same lifestyle as you, who can relate to and share in all of your experiences in foreign countries. It was through my friends from school that I got to explore Japan from a young girl’s perspective (purikura anyone?).

What was most different about my life in Japan, was the independence. At such a young age I was allowed to bike with my brother and my friends to anywhere we wanted – my parents didn’t have to worry. I remember riding my bike a good 5-10 minues to Lawson to grab ice cream, and exploring a major street to find a flower shop to buy flowers for my mom on mother’s day. That’s something you can’t do in the US!

Good things don’t last forever, though… because 2 years after moving to Japan came another life-changing announcement….