Here are some of the stupidest questions TCK’s get asked when going ” Home”.

” Do they have roads in X country?”

“  Does everyone live in the jungle?”

” Do people eat with their hands:”

” It’s really dangerous there, isn’t it?” ( this is made in a rhetorical obvious tone)

” How can you stand the heat there”

And, when going back to X country you are faced with several questions such as :

” How come your not blonde and blue eyed like all other americans?”

” It’s o.k. you have a lot of money anyways, I mean all Americans have money.”.

Ignorance is something that pervades every corner of the earth. We are given images of how countries are based on superstitions, taboos and limited view of the media. Case in point  : At times mainstream media tends to show the worst parts of a ” Third world” country , the dirtiest, most garbage ridden part.  And americans tend to e portrayed as having an idealized , rich and worry free life : The American Dream

All of these are lies of course based purely on our own misguided misconceptions. TCK kids have the advantage that they are always the outsider, and find themselves constantly defending other countries, places and people.

At times we tend to bite our tongues and smile through, finding that easier than having to deal with the questions and answers people pose .  Combating ignorance has nothing to do with where you live but how you view the world.

The normalcy of being different

Pies gastados

Corazon de gitana

Maleta llena de hoyos

The weirdest thing about having a third culture kid itch is that you are never truly home anywhere. BUt aside from that, unconcsciously you tend to seek out things that are different.  When I first came to El Salvador during the war having blonde hair and white skin I always stood out.  People always stared. When I was out in the country side giving Bahai children class someone asked me if I got red in the sun.
This has since changed , as tourism is now more common in the country. Yet when I arrived to college in the United States , I found it strange not to be ” different” anymore .  Yet the problem was that  inside I really was different. When I talked to people in freshman orientation about El Salvador people looked at me with repulsion like i was too strange for them.

So i sought out friends who would understand me, where I was different, where people sought me out as such. It felt strange but home at the same time. My friends never asked stupid questions about where I lived, they didnt lecture me on how dangerous a country seemed, they just accepted me for who I was. And that is hard to find, and that is what I call home for me.

What’s a TCK?

TCK stands for third culture kid.   It implies those kids who were uprooted , or are extremely multicultural. It is a term coined by a popular book called ” Third Culture Kids : The Experience of Growing up among worlds”.

Kids move for different reasons, some because they are missionary kids, or children of diplomats, others because they have military families. Unlike a lot of misconceptions, many TCK’s grow up a with a heightened sense of the world and an extreme sense of adaptability in any situation.  TCK”s find themselves incredibly adjusted to other worlds and languages. In fact, being different and being uprooted seem utterly normal to them.

TCK, for me, as the world gets increasingly smaller is an incredible blessing. It makes you see the world as endless, but yet in a tragic way in some ways you can never be totally a part of it. The studies about TCK’s are incredible, and hopefully I can share them in this blog.

The TCK Itch

My feet keep wandering from the ground. I itch to see other horizons, to feel the wind on my skin and taste something different . It is a habit of mine, to always seem to not conform to where I am, to remain unanchored.

I wonder why, but the fact is, I am a TCK at heart. I might be even a more stable one. We are resurfacing everywhere in the world and we aren’t going anywhere. We are third culture kids. We get around , and know airports probably better than our cousin’s home.

To feel normal is to feel uprooted, and different. I feel despair when I am not moving. I need to see new things, and to feel alive by doing it. For a TCK, the question Where are you from? Become an eternal answer. People feel compelled for detailed information and no answer fully satisfies them.

You are always going to be the odd man out but somehow you feel more comfortable that way. You are, and always will be, between worlds.

Hello world!

Welcome to the posts for a Third Culture kid , all about that little known world of kids who have lived anywhere and everywhere and have trouble finding meaning to the word ” home”.