Third Culture Kids

A friend of mine posted this, so I thought I'd post it too. It's about third culture kids, and it's very, very true.

"What is a third culture kid?" you say. Well...

A third culture kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships to all the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the third culture kid's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of the same background, other TCKs.


You know you're a TCK when:

• "Where are you from?" has more than one reasonable answer.

• You've said that you're from some foreign country, and your audience has asked you which US state said foreign country is in.

• You flew before you could walk.

• You speak two languages, but can’t spell in either. [I don't have this problem, but many TCKs do.]

• You feel odd being in the ethnic majority.

• You have at least three passports.

• You go into culture shock upon returning to your "home" country.

• Your life story uses the phrase "Then we moved to..." three (or four, or five, or twenty...) times.

• You wince when people mispronounce foreign words.

• You don't know whether to write the date as day/month/year, month/day/year, or some variation thereof.

• The best word for something is the word you learned first, regardless of the language.

• You get confused because US money isn't color-coded.

• You think VISA is a document that's stamped in your passport, not a plastic card you carry in your wallet.

• You own personal appliances with 3 types of plugs, know the difference between 110 and 220 volts, 50 and 60 cycle current, and realize that a trasnsformer isn't always enough to make your appliances work.

• You fried a number of appliances during the learning process.

• Half of your phone calls are unintelligible to those around you.

• You believe vehemently that football is played with a round, spotted ball.

• You consider a city 500 miles away "very close."

• You cruise the Internet looking for fonts that can support foreign alphabets.

• You think in the metric system and Celsius.

• You may have learned to think in feet and miles as well, after a few years of
living in the US.

• You're constantly very tempted to haggle with the checkout clerk for a lower price.

• Your minor is a foreign language you already speak. [Major, in my case... hehehe]

• When asked a question in a certain language, you absentmindedly respond in a different one.

• You miss the subtitles when you see the latest movie.

• You've gotten out of school because of monsoons, bomb threats, and/or popular demonstrations... but never a snowstorm.

• You speak with authority on the subject of airline travel.

• You know how to pack.

• You have the undying urge to move to a new country every couple of years.

• The thought of sending your kids to public school scares you, while the thought of letting them fly alone doesn't at all.

• You think that high school reunions are all but impossible.

• You have friends from 29 different countries.

• You sort your friends by continent.

• You constantly use the time zone map in your cell phone.

• You realize what a small world it is, after all.

Maybe you understand me a little bit better now.