Post Tagged with "third culture kids"

Raising a Third Culture Kid

I have recently become fascinated by the idea of TCKs, or third culture kids. What is a third culture kid? According to the TCK site, “a third culture kid is a “person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents’ culture.”

The other definition on the site: “TCKs are the prototype citizens of the future.”

Being a third culture kid: the paradox of belonging to many cultures, and none at the same time

Although I had never considered it before and certainly never even heard the term until a few years ago, I myself am a third culture kid. I was raised in Mexico City, moved to the US in my pre-teen years. Even when living in New York, after returning from Mexico, I very much considered myself a part of the world as opposed to just an American. I was a bit surprised when I moved to Spain aged 26 and people there considered me so “American” when most of my peers back in the US considered me the opposite. It was almost like I belonged to both… and yet neither. My son, born in London to American parents, has been a bit of a migrant since his birth- first London, then Rio, then Montevideo, and now his longest run (9 months) in Bali, Indonesia. Although we adore Bali, we’re travelers at heart and this won’t be his last move, so he’s just as likely to spend his childhood years in South America as he is in Asia, or somewhere else altogether.

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An international snacker

Sasa is from New Zealand and Japan and currently lives in Austria with her Austrian partner. Her blog Sasasunakku shows her passion for discovering and sharing new foods (sunakku is the pronunciation of ‘snack’ in Japanese), and you can find recipes from the various countries in which she has lived. Let’s find out more about Sasa’s international experiences.

You describe yourself as being from New Zealand and Japan. Is that because of your parents or the fact that you lived in both places as a child?

I was born in Sapporo in the northern island of Hokkaido in Japan to a Japanese father and a mother from New Zealand. We lived in Sapporo and Yokohama before moving to Auckland in New Zealand when I was six so my first language was Japanese though I express myself better in English now. 

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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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