Maria (Catalunya) and Fuat (Turkey)

I met Fuat in Germany, in a course of the Goethe Institute, I was coming from Catalunya and he was coming from Turkey. The first week we were in the same class, sitting side by side, but his level of German was higher so the teacher told him she would send him to a higher level. However, he insisted that his level was not that good and that he’d rather stay in the current class in order to be in the same class than me. Well, I didn’t learn this until later, so we were in the same class for a month, afternoons and week-ends we might also coincide as all the students were doing more or less the same kind of activities. The course finished and we bid goodbye.

Internet use was starting to be common in those years so we kept contact through email and ICQ (similar to Messenger). The following year Easter he invited me and another friend I had gone with to Germany to Turkey so we went there for a week, and September the same year he came to Catalunya. And that was the beginning of it, we kept seeing each other at whatever opportunity we had, for business reasons he was travelling couple or more times every year to Europe and I would join him in the weekend whatever city he was going to or he would make a stop over in Barcelona. After 8 years, however, he decided we could not go on like this and we had to make a decision. So after weighting all the possibilities we decided I was moving to Turkey, and after a year of living together and seeing I could live in Turkey we got married.

Thanks very much to Maria for sending this story. If you would like to post your story on My Partner is a Foreigner, please send to info@pocketcultures.com

Most multi-cultural couples seem to have their own unique take on the language they speak between them.

Many end up speaking a mixture of languages depending on how they feel at the time. Some start sentences in one language and finish in another, other couples stick mainly to one language but throw in the odd word of another. Some couples even use three languages to communicate!

This topic was the inspiration for a group blogging project started by Fned - a Mexican / American married to a French / Romanian husband - on her blog Fned’s blog.

In ‘bilingualism in expat couples’ a group of multicultural couples write about their experiences and experiments with different languages. Read Fned’s story and find links to the rest of the posts here.

Read More:
Articles about languages from Topics of the World
How cross-cultural relationships play an important role in breaking down prejudice

It becomes obvious there are two food cultures living in our household. Breakfast is always simple, with some toasts or cereals and fruits. Lunch is reserved for French food and dinner for Indonesian cuisine. None of us made the rule, this arrangement of French lunch and Indonesian dinner appeared out of the blue during our first year of marriage.

Actually, lunch is more Nico’s style than French cause he mixes French, other European and Mediterranean foods all together. Different kind of fresh breads from bakeries are the only ones allowed on our table. Roast beef, turkey and chicken hams, various types of spreads like hummus, fish paste and beef pate, roasted egg plants, salad, raw veggies with dips and of course large variety of cheeses are never missed. Nico likes to experiment with sandwiches by inventing different mixes and matches between the filling/spreads and breads. It’s fun to see our dining table loaded with different foods. Spreading and making sandwiches on the spot are moments we cherish as we often have good chats about everything. Although I mostly eat left over from the Indonesian dinner as my lunch *truly Indonesian I am*, I enjoy the moment whenever I join.

Dinners are my cookings, 99% Indonesian dishes. I began to cook a lot only since we moved to the US. When living in Holland I was spoiled by hundreds of Indonesian restaurants and toko all over Amsterdam so there was really no need for me to master Indonesian cooking. The first months in the US, I had no choice but to try out recipes if I wanted to keep eating my favorite dishes. I became even more motivated to cook when Joseph started to eat table food as I wanted him to enjoy them like I do. He loves eating rice as much as eating bread. Nico skips the rice once in a while, but he always eats the dishes. We still need to help Joseph eating since he’s still learning how to scoop the rice and dishes into the spoon, otherwise it will take him ages to finish his plate. Unlike lunch, dinner table is occupied by our plates and cutleries only. We scoop the meal directly from the warm pans on the stove, and rice is in the electric cooker on the counter top. Dinner is usually faster because everything is ready to eat. I cook pasta and potato dishes whenever only when I’m bored with rice *yes, sometimes I do feel a bit too ricey*.

Celebration dishes are the ones we all look forward to. Not only for their special tastes but also because they appear on occasions only. On Eid-Il Fitr, I prepare specials like rendang, opor ayam and sayur lodeh. Even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, from time to time Nico cooks real French cuisine on some of his family’s festivities. On birthdays we simply buy a nice mini chocolate cake from Whole Foods, sing birthday songs in French, Indonesian and English, blow the candle and enjoy the yummie slices.

To me, foods represent cultures. Having French and Indonesian dishes on our table show that each kitchen has a place in our family. It’s touching to see Joseph appreciates both. We hope Louise will do the same, they both are children of France and Indonesia after all.

The above story is an excerpt (taken with permission) from Santi’s blog Trilingual+1, about living and raising her 2 children, Joseph and Louise, in a multi-cultural environment. Santi and her husband have both lived in several different countries, and are currently in Germany. Read the original post here.

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

I’m going off-topic a bit for this post, but I wanted to point out some updates we’ve made to the Links section of the blogroll for My Partner is a Foreigner.

The purpose of My Partner is a Foreigner is to be a place to learn about other cultures and share cross-cultural experiences, especially involving relationships. Many of our visitors so far are living or thinking about cross-cultural experiences so I hope those of you will find something interesting in these sites.

Take a look and see what you think, and if you have any more to suggest please drop me a line, either in the comments or by email.

Bilingual / Bicultural family network
A network of families around the world who are raising children in a multl-cultural and multi-lingual environment. The website has loads of resources and they also publish a quarterly magazine with more stories and practical help for multi-cultural families.

Expat Blog
An online expatriate community. Blogs, destination guides and forums by expats all over the world.

Expat Women
Help for all women living overseas - advice on all kinds of expat experiences and how to make them sucessful. Articles cover business, relationships, having a baby abroad and there is also a directory of blogs written by expat women.

Intermix
A UK site which provides support to mixed-race families, individuals and anyone who feels they have a multiracial identity. The site contains a lot of information about many aspects of mixed-race experiences and there are forums to meet and discuss with people in similar situations.

EastdatesWest
Started by an Indian-American and Italian-American couple, eastdateswest has stories and other information mainly aimed at cross-cultural relationships involving Indians, many of which can also apply to multi-cultural relationships in general.

Internations
A social network for ‘expatriates and global minds’. Offers everything you would expect from a social network, plus local groups all over the world which organise meetups with other internationally-minded people living nearby.

As always, if you want to write and share your cross-cultural experiences we’d love to hear from you. All stories will of course be credited with a link back to your site if you have one.

Kyle (USA) and S. (Chile)

“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.