Post Tagged with "made for each other"

Meet Sharell (Australia) and Pradeep (India)

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.

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

An Indonesian wedding with a difference

This story is from Santi, about her (almost) traditional Indonesian wedding. Check out the photos to see what happened!

Traditionally the bride kisses the groom’s hand to show respect…

…But this time the groom kissed the bride’s hand too!

Santi wrote: This scene happened after the ijab kabul (wedding vow) during our akad (religious ceremony). Normally, the wife should kiss the husband’s hand to show her respect, and in return the husband should kiss her forehead to show his love.

But when I told (future) husband about this, he asked, “Why don’t we rather kiss each others’ hands?” I immediately liked the idea, and we agreed to do it, without telling anybody. When husband was kissing my hand, the guests were shouting ‘ooooh’ ‘aaaaah’ out of surprise. You can even see my brother’s face LOL .. who was looking at me as he suspected it was all my idea.

Read the original on Santi’s blog.

Want to share your story or photos? Write to us! info @ pocketcultures.com

Read more:
Santi also wrote about food in an Indonesian-French family
More stories and photos of cross-cultural relationships
Indonesian blogs on Blogs of the World

Carol (USA) and Abdullah (Saudi Arabia)

I met my husband when I was still an American diplomat and posted to Islamabad, Pakistan. He was also in Pakistan with his respective employer. Our courtship ended up spanning over several years and five different countries before we made the decision to merge our separate lives together into one. During the courting and “getting to know one another” period I have wonderful memories of horsebacking riding in the wild mountains of Pakistan with my (then) future husband, riding elephants together in India and enjoying a desert safari in the UAE for starters…

My husband says he realized relatively quickly that he wanted our lives to merge together. Honestly, I knew it too but it took me much longer to be able to acknowledge that fact to myself. When I met him I was very happily single, immersed in my career, had a great job, beautiful supporting family and some wonderful friends. I had to think good and hard about whether I was ready and willing to totally change my life around for an individual from a differing country, different culture and traditions different from my own. I knew that when I said “I do” my life as I knew it would never be the same. I would have to leave my career and to a degree, give up a lot of the independence I was accustomed to.

We took our time and both made sure that we understood how each other thought; what were our respective values and equally important, were they compatible? Unlike many American women and Saudi men who get together we did not meet each other earlier in our lives and in the States or while attending University. We met after having each experienced a number of varying life-changing experiences and very clear on not only what we wanted from life but what we could or could not accept.

Life continues to be a learning experience in communication, cultural distinctions and a deepening of the relationship. On the lighter side, I’ve learned that when he says “shoes-less” he really means barefoot and when I’m stumbling in trying to find the right Arabic words to express myself to my husband or his family, he knows exactly when to step in and save me from making an embarrassing faux pas.

We look out for each other and are constant teachers and examples to each other when it comes to any cultural differences or distinctions. We are both cognizant and always want to step with the right foot forward with each other and with our families. Of course we had to face the usual “What? You’re marrying an American?? Are you going to become an American citizen now?” Or, “How can you think of marrying a Saudi? He’s going to put you in a burka in a palace somewhere and we’ll never see you again!” We’ve learned when to overlook or ignore the skeptics and troublemakers and how to best reassure family members on both sides of customs and cultures that are new and different to them. I’ve learned when it is prudent to be more “Saudi” and in turn he knows when it’s best to be more “American.” Daily we make that transition between East and West and feel like we have adapted the best of each others cultures and customs.

Our life is a continuing love story as well as each day an ongoing chapter. On the political front the US-Saudi relationship may have its ups and downs but on the personal front, I like to believe my husband and I illustrate that US-Saudi relations can be very good indeed!

Thanks to Carol for sharing her story, originally published on her blog here. Carol writes more about life in Saudi Arabia in her blog American Bedu.

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More about Carol’s blog in Blogs of the World: an Insider’s view of Saudi Arabia

The Dragonfly and the Mosquito

The story of Aldo (Netherlands) and Elena (Spain). 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.

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