This is the first in our series of interviews with cross-cultural couples around the world. Hope you enjoy it! If you’d like to participate in a future interview send over your details.

Where are you from?

Sharell: I’m Australian and Pradeep is Indian

Where did you meet?

In Kolkata, India, where we were both working at the time. (We’ve since settled in Mumbai).

What language do you speak at home?

We speak a combination of English and Hindi. In the beginning, we only spoke in English. However, the more my Hindi improves, the more of it we speak to each other. My parents in law don’t speak English, so I always speak in Hindi to them (to varying degrees of success!).

Do you try to cook food from each other’s countries?

I do cook a lot of Indian food because we both love it, and because the ingredients are readily available and inexpensive here in India. I also make typical Australian food like grilled meat and salads from time to time, but not very often. It becomes too bland! Other types of food I regularly cook are Italian (mainly pasta) and Chinese. Ingredients for Italian food are harder to come by though, and are often imported and costly.

Can you explain one part of your partner’s culture that you found surprising?

Having to bathe in the morning before eating breakfast. Traditional Hindus consider it to be unclean if they don’t bathe before eating in the morning. My husband isn’t very traditional, and we don’t practice this at home. Therefore, I was quite surprised when I stayed at my in-law’s place (who are traditional) and my mother in law was very reluctant to serve me breakfast. Instead, she kept asking me if I wanted to take a shower (obviously too polite to tell me that I was unclean and shouldn’t eat). Finally, I figured it out!

What’s the best thing about being in a cross-cultural relationship?

The richness that comes from discovering another culture. Being in a cross cultural relationship is a great way to learn and experience new things, and broaden your view of the world. I also love the spiritual aspect of India, and feel like it’s added a great perspective to my life.

What’s the hardest thing about being in a cross-cultural relationship?

The different ways of behaving, and trying to understand what is normal behaviour for the culture and not getting upset by it.

Indians prefer to ask for directions (which often turn out to be wrong!) rather than rely on maps, they aren’t very punctual, and can be quite intrusive. I’ve found the lack of privacy in India quite hard to deal with. Visitors turn up unannounced, and people commonly ask personal questions. However, I’ve had to recognise that this is the cultural norm and try to adapt. India has definitely required me to relax, open up, and become more accepting!

Do you have any advice for other cross-cultural couples?

Try to understand and appreciate each other’s cultures as much as possible. Also, adapt to fit into the culture where necessary. You’ll get more respect from people that way.

Read more from Sharell on her blog Diary of a White Indian Housewife. She also writes about India travel for About.com.

Enjoyed this?
Would you like to be featured in our interview series? Fill in our form or leave a comment
Read more stories of cross-cultural relationships from My Partner is a Foreigner

Gayle (Australia) and Godwin (Ghana).

While watching tributes to the one and only Michael Jackson via international media this week, in Ghana, the comparisons with Elvis were frequent.

Godwin: “Who is this Elvis?”
Me: “Elvis Presley.”
Godwin: “Who?”
Me: “You know, Ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog…”
Godwin: “I do not know.”
Me: “Really? You’ve not heard of Elvis?”
Godwin: “No.”
Me (pausing a moment): “What about The Beatles?”
Godwin: “No.”
Me (suspicious): “Are you pulling my leg?”
Godwin (annoyed): “I’m not touching your leg.”
Me: “I know. I mean: ‘Are you kidding?’’”
Godwin: “What about?”
Me: “About not knowing The Beatles.”
Godwin: “Why would I be kidding?”
Me: “It’s just. Wow, imagine there’s no Elvis.” (D’oh! No puns…)
Godwin: “OK. Let’s hit the toad and frog.”
Me: “You’re funny.”

While it’s astonishing (for me, at least) to discover a nation where no one I spoke to, this week, knew of Elvis or The Beatles, Ghana boasting its own rich musical culture, anyway, this exchange gives you a taste of our number one challenge: communication.

The thing that still bewilders me is that ideas, experiences and perceptions that seem to have been hard-wired from birth—from Elvis to expressions like “pulling my leg”—have virtually no frame of reference in my life here.

Indeed, when I once remarked that someone had “a kangaroo loose in the top paddock”, Godwin asked, “What’s a paddock?” There are no “paddocks”; land is hardly fenced.

You see, communication is as much about language as it is culture, and we’ve had some rip-roaring arguments because of it. Misinterpreted semantics, that is.

So I dropped idioms altogether for a while. I believe, however, that building a mutual frame of reference ought to be half the fun. I mean, I take pleasure in foreign cultures because of the differences in how we think (and also because they teach me that universal principles—love, trust, kindness and forgiveness—hold true everywhere, in spite of our differences). So, I do include idioms carefully and occasionally.

And Godwin teaches me local proverbs. “Ntek, Kantek, Aniwanpehd” is “Kusa” (another language) for “If I pull and you pull, the calabash will break.” Essentially, if we keep fighting, then the relationship (symbolized by the calabash) will collapse. So, stop fighting!

For his part, Godwin is hammering away at Aussie slang. “Frog and toad” is rhyming slang for “road”. “Kitchen sink” replaces “drink”. He endeared himself hugely when he declared: “Let’s hit the toad and frog and have a sink in the kitchen.”

Personally, I struggle with Frafra, his main language. Frafra’s philosophy is: “Why make a two syllable word when we could have fun with six?” Gomatiataho (rainbow) sounds Japanese (my second language, so it clicks) but I’m having trouble with its array of breath-suffocating words.

On a serious note, I asked Godwin how he thinks he’s changed since we met: “I am better at listening and less likely to jump to conclusions while you talk. I now cross-check by asking questions instead of assuming based on my own interpretation. And I think you’re more tolerant of my round-about explanations and less impatient now,” he said.

I agree. And I know more than ever that mutual understanding is achieved best when I listen first, with my heart, and then speak—with “calabashes” of mindfulness.
One of our simple pleasures is creating meals exclusively from local ingredients, like we create nonsense language from silly conversations.

Me: “Mpo-oheya.” (Thank you—you must choke on the “o”s)
Godwin: “Mpoka kaboi.” (You’re welcome)
Me: “Was that ‘cowboy’?”
Godwin: “Mpoka KA BOI.”
Me: “Sounds like ‘COW BOY’.”
Godwin: “Mpoka ‘BLOOOONDIE’!”

He means Clint Eastwood (aka. “Blondie”) in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly—also a recent discovery for him.

And that’s how we’re creating “Fra-lish” (and building that mutual frame of reference) even if I can’t quite use it with the feisty old market women (who whisper slyly, I now understand, about my “wonderful hips” when I go haggle: Differences in the feminine ideal—now that’s a whole other topic…)

On the blog This is Ghana you can read more about Gayle and Godwin’s life in Ghana. Especially interesting at the moment are the posts on Ghanaian reactions to Obama’s visit last week.

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

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