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.

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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.

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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.

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