“Ahhh, Kyle, gordita, como estas?”

(Translation: Ahhh, Kyle, fatty, how are you?)

This is how my father in law would greet me every time we went over to his house. Although, the word gordita was alternately replaced with “rellenita,” another term, also referring to plumpness.

At first, I thought I needed to be on model behavior for my husband’s parents, so I would just grit my teeth, clench my fists, and smile and nod, when all I really wanted to do was punch his dad in the face, as he insulted me about my weight over and over and over again.

Finally one day I’d had it. When my father in law inevitably brought up my weight at the dinner table in front of everybody, telling me I looked “even fatter than normal,” I took the bait and snapped back, “Well, you look older and more wrinkly than normal.”

Silence.

Crickets chirping.

Me turning beet red as I realized I’d just said something truly offensive.

Eventually someone coughed politely and changed the subject. But, after dinner my husband took me aside.

“Why in the world would you insult my dad like that?!?” he asked.

I told him, “I’m sick of the weight comments, tell him to stop insulting me.”

And then the error of my ways was explained to me. My husband told me that in Chile, “Gordita” is a term of endearment and is only used lovingly. He also explained that it’s not at all impolite to bring up other people’s weight loss/weight gain and that if people do, that just means they care about you enough to notice.

And then I explained to my husband that telling someone they look fat/fatter is one of the rudest things you can possibly do in my culture and that certain gringas (ahem, not me, of course) are even prone to random acts of violence when old men, who are also fat, feel it necessary to make weight comments.

Needless to say, hubby had a little chat with my father in law and my fatness, or lack thereof, was never brought up again.

Kyle’s blog Just Married Chilean Style has more stories of married life in Chile.

Enjoyed this? Read more stories of cross-cultural encounters from My Partner is a Foreigner.

I’ve been living in Germany with my German husband for the past 18 years. We’ve moved house once and always made do with standard German refrigerators - not much room and nothing special to look at. A couple of years ago, however, prior to a kitchen renovation we bought a big silver side-by-side ‘American style’ fridge complete with an ice maker.

Now this would have been no big deal if we lived in N. America. There, if you told someone you got a fancy new fridge, they’d probably start yawning. Here in Germany, it’s like all the neighbours have to come over and take a look at the utter decadence. Our duplex neighbour was suitably impressed and called it a Luxuskühlschrank - a luxury fridge. We even thought about charging admission.

After the fridge was in place I had no peace in our little kitchen with everyone running in and out every five minutes to fill their glasses with ice cubes or crushed ice, my husband being the worst culprit, looking forward to long, hot summers filled with well-chilled cocktails and little paper umbrellas.

But my better half hasn’t always had such an easy relationship with ice cubes. He’s German, remember, and Germans have a thing about cold drinks. It’s a well-known German old wives tale that if your drink is too cold, you will immediately get pneumonia and die. Oh yes, it’s true. Just ask my in-laws. Ice cream is fine, ice cubes are definitely not. Very confusing for a foreigner.

When I first moved to Germany, I asked Mr. M where his ice cube tray was and he replied, “Ice…cubes? What are these ‘ice cubes’ of which you speak?”

They do actually sell ice cube trays in here, so we went out and got one. After that it was a cautious “You mean I won’t get pneumonia and die if I put ice in my drink? Promise?” He tried it, he lived, and the search for the perfect ice cube tray was on. Over the years we must have collected about ten of the things - all different shapes, sizes and materials.I guess we really have no more use for them now, but maybe I’ll keep a couple for old time’s sake - to remember the day when Mr. M finally moved into the ice age.

Christina has lived in Germany since 1990. In her blog Mausi she writes about more cross-cultural adventures in Germany with her German husband, bilingual boys and a garden full of weeds.

I am from Bursa, in Turkey and my husband is from Bari, in the south of Italy. We have been married for 5 years. We’re coming both from Mediterranean countries so there are not so many differences but in these 5 years we managed to find some! The first thing I noticed is the Italian food is so different to Turkish food.

Let’s start with my first Italian family meal. It was in Bari, with my husband, his brothers, sisters, cousins, wives of brothers… Huge table! We ate seafood and when it arrived the whole family said ‘wow! look at this!’ The dish was octupus cooked in seawater. They said I should taste this very delicious food. I tasted and I couldn’t chew it, it was like rubber tasting of salt. All eyes were looking at me… ‘Do you like it?’ they asked. ‘Mmmm… it’s ok’, I said. I asked if anyone would like to finish and they jumped on it! In Bari fresh octupus is a delicacy.

The meal time is quite different in our countries. In Italy, Sunday lunch can last from 1:30 to 5pm. In Turkey it is from 1-2pm. In Italy they eat pasta, followed by meat or fish. We eat soup (in winter) and mezze to start. We eat pasta as main course and sometimes at the same time as the meat. And we make pasta into a salad with yoghurt. For my husband it was very strange to see me eating pasta with yoghurt! ‘what are you doing??’ he said. Now he also eats pasta with yoghurt (woman power…!)

The second difference is coffee. Italians are so quick to drink their espresso or macchiato. In Turkey it is a ritual to drink Turkish coffee and chat. We need at least 15 minutes. Everytime I drank coffee with Roberto I expected to sit and chat. But our coffee arrived and he drank it in one gulp. I am still disappointed but I got used to it (man power…!)

So on pasta I won. On coffee he won!

Lamia’s blog Bursa Daily Photo shows photos of her town Bursa, in Turkey

If you have a cross-cultural story to share please send it to info@pocketcultures.com

The first time they met François, my parents insisted on taking him to the nicest Persian restaurant in Los Angeles. My father ordered the appetizer sampler, which François ate with gusto while questioning my mother about the ingredients:
“Is this the spice sumac?”
“Are these the thin-skinned Persian cucumbers?”
“Is the feta made with sheep’s milk?”
Once the appetizers were finished, François selected the most copious dish on the menu, the sultani, a combination of lamb, beef, and chicken kebob on an enormous mound of rice. His order arrived, looking as if someone had just grilled an entire petting zoo. François ate and ate and ate. My father asked me, in Persian, whether he always ate like this. My mother said, in Persian, that she hoped he wasn’t going to get sick. Meanwhile, François kept eating.

By the time he was done, there was not a grain of rice left on his large oval plate. My mother told him how lucky he was that he could eat enough food for three people and not be fat. François was of normal weight - although he did outweigh me, which fulfilled one of my two requirements for dating a guy. The other requirement was a total lack of interest in watching sports on television. François fulfilled that one, too.

Unbelievably, he ordered dessert, exclaiming that he couldn’t possibly imagine skipping the rose water and pistachio ice cream. By then, I was just hoping that if he did throw up, it wouldn’t happen in my father’s car.

Once we arrived at my house, I asked François why he had eaten so much. “I know that Middle Easterners love to feed people and I wanted to make a good impression on your parents,” he said. “But now I need to go lie down”

The story above is an extract from the book Funny in Farsi published with permission from Firoozeh Dumas. Firoozeh is the author of Funny in Farsi, an excellent and funny book of tales about growing up Iranian in America, and her second book, Laughing without an accent, has just been released.

If you have a story to share, or if you would like to receive our email newsletter, we’d love to hear from you at: info@pocketcultures.com

The Christmas menu in my boyfriend’s family home in the south of Spain consists mainly of mariscos (seafood). The star dish is the gamba roja - large red prawns. The proper way to cook it is with sea water. The problem is getting the sea water out of the sea! Their house is on the beach, but the thought of getting knee high into the sea in December shocks everyone in the family (as it is assumed one will get a cold immediately), and this task builds up as the big challenge of Christmas day.

As someone who comes from a country with proper winter, it was understood that the cold will not affect me, and I bravely assumed the task the first Christmas I spent there. Now it is always up to me to make sure there is sea water for the gamba roja!

Do you have a cross-cultural story? We’d love to hear from you. Please write to us at info@pocketcultures.com

By Melinda Gallo

After flying back to Italy from the US, my husband and I decided to spend the night at his parent’s house because we were too exhausted to drive to our apartment downtown.

Because one of my suitcases never made the connecting flight, I didn’t have any of my own things. My husband lent me a pair of his pajamas to wear and we went straight to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I was feeling groggy from jet lag. My husband suggested that I take a shower to wake up, so he told me that he’d get everything I need for my shower in his parent’s bathroom.

I walked into their bathroom and jumped in the shower when the water was hot. When I opened the shower door afterwards, I couldn’t find a bath towel hanging anywhere. I spotted a small hand towel and considered drying off with it, but couldn’t bring myself to use it because it looked like it had already been used.

I stood on the shower mat dripping wet, beginning to get cold, trying to come up with another solution. I didn’t want to yell out to my husband to get me a towel because he wouldn’t have been able to hear me in the kitchen.

As a last resort, I decided to dry myself off with his pajamas instead. Luckily, my husband had handed me an accappatoio
(bathrobe) before taking my shower, so I walked out of the bathroom wearing it and holding my now wet pajamas.

I flung the accappatoio on the bed and started getting dressed. My husband scooped up the accappatoio and was about to hang it up when he said, “How come the accappatoio is dry?”

“Why would it be wet?” I asked.

“Didn’t you use it to dry yourself off?” he said, patting it between his hands.

I told him that he forgot to put a bath towel in the bathroom for me, so I had to use his pajamas to dry myself off. He told me that the accappatoio was my bath towel and showed me how to dry myself off by putting it on and using it like a towel.

I had only ever worn an accappatoio in luxurious hotels after washing up and never knew it could be used as a bath towel. As a result, I got my own accappatoio a few days later. I find it even more practical than a bath towel: I can dry off quickly while keeping warm and cover up at the same time when I exit the bathroom.

You can read more about Melinda’s adventures in Italy in her blog Living in Florence

Enjoyed this? Read more stories of cross-cultural encounters from My Partner is a Foreigner.

The frog and I speak a language understood only by ourselves, where sentences may start in French, end in English and include some words which hover somewhere in between. I’ve adopted some of the frog’s more endearing mistakes because they amused me: faulty plurals (feets, sheeps), creative past tenses (“I’m feeling hanged over”). He also does a very convincing faux Yorkshire accent when he says “fancy a cuppa tea luv?” and slips into it automatically (as do I) when he spends time with my family.

Mother called last night and asked the frog if he had any idea what she could get him for his upcoming birthday. I would give anything to have been a fly on the wall to see her reaction when he said that he could do with a pair of handcuffs*.

Strait-laced mother must have been struggling to process this unexpected/unwelcome revelation about our sex life and his request was met with a protracted embarrassed silence. I was too busy choking with mirth on a sour cream and onion Pringle to put either of them out of their misery.

He meant cuff links*.

Reproduced with permission from Catherine Sanderson´s blog Petite Anglaise. Catherine is about to publish a book about her adventures living in Paris.

*note for non-native english speakers:
handcuffs - the police use them to fasten your hands together
cuff links - decorative device used to fasten shirt sleeves

It’s a question he’d had dozens of times: Why on earth would you move from sunny friendly Sydney to cold dreary London?? Are you insane?
But finally, he had an answer.

Their meeting was uneventful, a casual hello at church one evening. Not long after however, Gezza was thoroughly missing his aussie barbecues (”barbies”) and decided to host one, and even though he hadn’t invited Alice, a mutual friend told her to come along. Alice thought she’d better check whether that was ok, so asked him and of course received a positive response.
And so appropriately, the pair had their first proper conversation over a bbq. The problem was, Alice was a vegetarian… how the heck was that going to work with an aussie bbq?

She arrived with her vegetarian sausages, “Would you like me to use a different pair of tongs?” Gezza asked, jokingly, trying to show his good aussie sense of humour. “Yes please” came the reply from an oblivious Alice, thinking to herself, “what a thoughtful, sensitive guy!”. Gezza swallowed his surprise and went inside in search of an extra pair of tongs. It was obvious that these two were made for each other.

So they got married and are still living in cold dreary London… (what happened there?)

Is your friend / husband / wife or partner from another country? Send your story to info@pocketcultures.com

The Dragonfly and the Mosquito: A true story by Nivja de Jong.

Once upon a time there was a very ambitious Spanish dragonfly. Spain was too small for her ambition, so she flew to another land. A small and far away land. It was a country of constant rain, but where all the mosquitos were very big. Even bigger than Spanish dragonflies. It was a country where the mosquitos always ate bread for lunch, bread with yellow cheese. Sometimes they ate ham with their bread, or sometimes a bit of salad.

The Spanish dragonfly tried to settle in, but it wasn´t so easy to feel at home in a foreign country. When she got home in the evening she felt hungry enough to eat a horse because the lunches were so small! And it was often so cold that her wings turned blue, although she wore three coats in winter. Luckly she met many other Spanish dragonflies in the town where she was staying. Sometimes when it was not raining so much she even forgot that she was not in Spain.

One evening our dragonfly found herself flying to the party of a mosquito born in this small, cold country. The party seemed very Spanish. There was tapas and sangria, and all the insects were dancing. The dragonfly studied this mosquito very carefully. Could he also be a dragonfly? He was the same height as a Spanish dragonfly, he made the same noise as a Spanish dragonfly, his eyes were like those of a Spanish dragonfly, but when he danced he did not look Spanish, because he danced like a mosquito.

Another night, there was another party and this time the two insects danced together. All the insects who watched this dance could tell this was love. From the way the mosquito was swinging the dragonfly, and the dragonfly floated so surely in his arms, everyone present could tell that these two insects belonged together.

Where would they live? Would they live in this small country where it rained constantly? Or should they fly to another country? They decided it was better to fly to Barcelona. Not because the dragonfly was missing her country, but because the mosquito felt he could be more comfortable in Barcelona than in the Netherlands, because it would rain less often. Happily the mosquito adapted well to life in Barcelona: he learned to wear flip flops, like the dragonflies; he ate huge lunches, like the dragonflies; and he learned to speak like the dragonflies.

The two insects threw a huge party for their wedding in the South of Spain, and they danced all night. Afterwards, they moved to their new home in Barcelona, which had a swimming pool. In the following years they filled the swimming pool with dragonfliquitos and mosquiflies and they all lived happily ever after.

Do you have a story? Please send it to info@pocketcultures.com.

Lydia writes: I had known my (now) husband Carlo for a few months when we were invited by friends to a celebration dinner. It would be a smart event, and I asked Carlo what he was planning to wear. “I have a maroon velvet suit which will be perfect” he answered. Well, in England where I grew up “maroon velvet” suits have not been in fashion since sometime during the 1970s, but since we had not known each other for very long, and after all the Italians are supposed to know something about style, I politely said nothing.  

However there was no need to have worried. On the evening itself Carlo turned up wearing a very nice dark brown corduroy suit. He had translated the Italian for brown corduroy (velluto marrone) into the nearest equivalent English words, thus causing my confusion. Now I am learning Italian, and making up many more funny expressions of my own!

Ok, well we had to start somewhere! But we´d love to hear from you for future posts.

Are you married to / dating someone who comes from a different country? What was the most surprising, funny, even uncomfortable event linked to your different backgrounds? Did you grow up worlds apart, or are your cultures pretty similar? If you don´t have a foreign partner, you could still contribute if you have ever had a friend of a different nationality.

Anyway, back to the post. Where better to start than the great Michael Caine. He fell in love with his wife Shakira after seeing her on the tv, in a coffee advertisement. As the advertisement was set in Brazil, he assumed she was Brazilian and he managed to persuade his friend to go to Brazil with him so he could meet the girl he wanted to marry…

…Luckily he thought to check with the company making the commercial before leaving, Shakira was Indian (born in Guyana) and lived only one mile away from his house in London! He called her the next day and the two have been together ever since.