Post Tagged with "multicultural families"

Rebecca Caro, a Denver native in love with Argentinean food and culture

I met Rebecca Caro (in cyberspace, not in person yet) when we took part in a group post about Argentinean alfajores organised by a common blogger friend.

I immediately checked out her blog, From Argentina with Love, and was pleasantly surprised. A free-lance food and travel writer, Rebecca is passionate about food and her passion is contagious. Her collection of Argentinean recipes is mouth-watering: short ribs and chimichurri, empanadas, carbonada. You name, she’s got it. I urge our readers to try at least one recipe!

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What does your name say about you?

I’ve always taken pride in my last name. That distinctive “-ski” ending, asserting a clear and concise Polish root.

I must have first become aware of the Polish-ness of “Makowski” sometime during early grade school. There always seemed to be a few of us in every class. Those rogue Makowski’s, Jablonski’s and Kotarski’s, deviously appearing on the role call next to the Smith’s and the Johnson’s. Those poor teachers would trip over the pronunciation for at least a week.

Then, there was that one time, out on the playground at recess. It must have been around third grade. One of my kiddy classmates made up a chant to help her remember my last name. “MA has a COW that SKIS. Ma-kow-ski!” She thought it was totally cool. So did I.

Over the years, I got used to the pronunciation blunders and spelling errors. I can’t even begin to count the times when I’ve had to dictate my last name to someone. In one breath, the unfortunate receiver’s response is always something like, “How in the hell is that spelled?”, immediately followed by, “That’s Polish, isn’t it?” Polish names do that. Confuse and clarify, both at the same time.

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Romania to Tehran, via Cyprus

Diana Vladulescu writes about Iran, its tasty cuisine and lovely places as well as other topics on her blog Live Life Persian Style.

Originally from Romania, Diana now lives in Cyprus with her Iranian husband.

Diana contacted us through Blogs of the World and we asked if she would like to be featured on People of the World since she has experienced such a variety of cultures in her life.

Thanks Diana for agreeing to the interview!

Was traveling or living abroad something you dreamed of when you were growing up in Romania?

I grew up in Romania while it was a communist country. That meant nobody was able to go abroad except for sailors and pilots, sports people for international competitions. All the other people who wanted to visit other countries were not allowed. People who wanted to emigrate risked their lives swimming across the Danube or crossing the border illegally. Many of them died in the process.

Later on, when communism was overthrown, even if the borders were open, not everybody afforded to travel outside and neither did I. I remember seeing a travel show on TV and the reporter saying something like “never think you won’t travel abroad” and I replied to him in my mind “yeah right”.

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People of the World

If you’re a regular reader of PocketCultures, you’ve probably noticed that we have just renamed this section People of the World.

When we started My partner is a foreigner, we wanted to look at cultural differences in a light-hearted way. If you’re in a cross-cultural relationship, you come into contact with another culture every day, so you’ve got stories to tell.

But of course cross-cultural couples are not the only ones experiencing other cultures on a daily basis. As PocketCultures grew, we met many other people with global minds and outlooks. Some are part of multicultural families; some are Third Culture Kids; some are parents raising bilingual children. Some live in another country; some love to travel; some embrace other cultures and make friends in other parts of the world without even leaving home.

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How Irish Am I?

Growing up in Australia I had very little understanding of my cultural background.

With the knowledge that I had Irish ancestry, I told people I was Australian and one quarter Irish. It didn’t matter that this was wrong – or that my maths was appalling, and I was actually half Irish – because our cultural background was not something my family discussed. And I never gave much thought to it.

On my Mum’s side, my grandparents were born in Australia and my great grandparents were English, with a bit of French thrown in there somewhere. I never knew my Dad’s parents, only that they were Irish, emigrating from Ireland to England and then onto Australia where my Dad was born.

My Mum was raised Protestant and my Dad was raised Catholic; as a consequence I was raised religion-less, with my parents deciding that it was better to leave me with this choice (read: conflict).

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