Saturday, January 27, 2007

Third Culture Kid

I found this list and think it reveals just some of the odd things TCKs deal with. It's amazing because it mirrors my life so well...especially the last one! :)

*You know you're a TCK when:

-"Where are you from?" has more than one reasonable answer
-You flew before you could walk
-You had a passport years before your driver's license.
-You have frequent flyer accounts on multiple airlines.
-You constantly want to and do use said frequent flyer accounts to travel to new places.
-You know how to pack.
-You own personal appliances with 3 types of plugs, know the difference between 110 and 220 volts and realize that a transformer isn't always enough to make your appliances work.
-You fried a number of appliances during the learning process.
-You speak with authority on the quality of airline travel.
-You go into culture shock upon returning to your "home" country
-You get confused because US money isn't colour-coded.
-You feel odd being in the ethnic majority
-You wince when people mispronounce foreign words
-You sort your friends by continent
-Someone brings up the name of a team, and you get the sport wrong.
-You don't know where home is
-You realize it really is a small world, after all.
-You know the geography of the rest of the world, but you don't know the geography of your own country.

1 comment:

skattebo said...

Carrie!
Hey, thanks for saying hi! i miss talking to you after the whole job thing was over... how are you???
i wanted to say, this TCK thing is amazing! It's SO true- so many of them.
the other day i told a friend, "Yeah, i think it would be really fun to go to a Nascar game, at least once." and she looked at me and then we both busted out laughing. "You mean a race?" she said. "Oh, Riiigght..."