It’s been a long time since I last put together a TCK Perspective edition of Recommended Reading. That’s what I’ve done this week, gathering posts from the last few months in which TCKs share their own perspectives – their individual stories and experiences. Actually, it’s been so long since I’ve done this that I’ve decided to split it up into two posts! Stay tuned for a follow up soon…

Aramco Brats: Life inside the Kingdom
The Third Culture Kid Project
Poignant reflections on the particular experience of oil brats – specifically, Aramco brats. These are TCKs who grew up in the compounds run by Saudi oil company Aramco.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the hardest countries in the world to get a tourist visa especially if you are not Muslim. This means that once expats finish their work assignments and their work visa finishes, they can never (or at least in most cases) go back. It is perhaps this very fact that makes KSA so hard to say goodbye to. Growing up we always joked that we lived in a “bubble” but it was only until I left that I realised how true that really was. . . We could drive for hours yet reach nowhere. We were always confined by the compound walls- but because we were all together, this somehow always felt okay. I always believed I was living a normal teenage life but thinking back that’s not quite how it was. . . But here is a secret: Aramco Brats never truly move on. We always carry a part of our childhood/teenage years with us. It is what allows us to connect with the rest of the Aramco brats around the world. Its what creates that special bond. Saudi for us is the place where we made friends that we trust with our lives, where we were surrounded by people from all places, races and religions and we cared for each other unconditionally. Saudi is the place where we were raised not only by our parents but our friend’s parents. It is the place that taught us to add “wallah” “ mishwar” “ inshallah” to our vocabulary. . . Saudi taught me how to love not only people, but cultures, and sunrises, and car rides. It made me fall in love with streets and routine. I left over six years ago, and there is not one day where I don’t miss home.”

Third Culture Kid spotlight: Meet Daniel
Chameleon Dance
An interview with a TCK from a corporate family, talking a little about his perceptions of the world from the vantage of his Third Culture childhood.
“Home for me really depends on the people around me, because places can change. It’s not so cut and dry, though. Places are important too, and ultimately home comes from that combination of places that you feel comfortable in, with people you like having around you that help you feel at home. And yes, this can be more than one place.”

The Crazy, Awesome, Challenging Lives of Diplo-Teens
Jan von Schleh
This next story is an interview with several embassy kids.
“Typically, once my family moves away from one city, we don’t go back. I don’t have a ‘home town’ anywhere in the world, not even in the United States! I make friends wherever I go, but never good enough to travel back and visit. My extended family members are the only people we ever go back to see, and while it’s a very small group of people, they’re all spread out over the US. During our summers, my parents and I usually stay where we are and let family come to us because we move so often, it might be their only chance to visit the crazy places we live! Sometimes my immediate family then visits a new country like Croatia, Greece, or Finland!”

My Final Mistake in Bogota
Raised in the Foreign Service
And going back in time, we have a childhood vignette from an embassy kid, reflecting on a story from her time in Colombia.
“As we approached the end of the year, I was no longer the new kid in Mrs. Ospina’s fourth grade class at the English School in Bogotá. I had caught up on stuff I missed when Dad worked at the Embassy in Rome. Instead of the Etruscans, the English School taught the Henrys, Shakespeare and how we lost the colonies. A good story always held my attention. But a new hurdle loomed: the final examinations, a series of essay questions written in England, mailed across the Atlantic to Colombia and mailed back to England to be graded. I imagined a line of stern women, stuffed into tweed suits like our headmistress Mrs. Mason, hunched over our papers and ripping at them like Andean vultures.”

Loneliness My Old Friend
Velvet Ashes
Next up, meditations on the experience and lessons of loneliness, as told by a missionary kid who grew up in rural Mongolia:
“I grew up in areas of Mongolia that were very isolated. There were years I spent in cities without other expat children and friendships were hard for me to build among the nationals. You know you are different, and they know you are different and, while you love each other deeply, you are keenly aware that you don’t fit, that this isn’t your home. For many years my best friends wouldn’t acknowledge me in public.”

On the Topic of “Goodbye”…
We All See This World A Little Differently
This TCK shares a lot of great insights on the impact of goodbyes in the lives of TCKs.
“Probably the most significant goodbye I have ever experienced was the day I graduated. I graduated with 27 other people that represented 11 different nationalities. I, likely, will never again (on this earth) be in the same space as those 27 others. The day I graduated, I said goodbye to people I grew up with. People who formed who I was up until that point. When I say the word “goodbye”, generally, I think people associate that with the choice to leave. In the Ex-Pat (ex-patriot) community, goodbyes come in various forms. They come in re-assignment from an organization, they can come from the local government not allowing you back in the country, they can come from you staying but your friend/family member going “home”. Goodbyes come in all sorts of ways. Somethings I’ve learned about goodbye are that they never get any easier. I guess with advances in technology we are able to stay in visual contact, but it is still hard when there is a lack of physical presence (and this is by no means isolated to the TCK life).”

Living Hopefully with Depression – Iona’s Story
Noggy Bloggy
This is a powerful piece in which one TCK tells her story of coping with depression.
“I’ve always had strong emotions. When we lived in Portugal I devoured the time with my family, loving the beach, the sun, the baked chicken we ate with fresh bread on Sundays. When we moved to Angola I felt the fear, the stress, the anxiety about a new and dangerous place. Then my sisters started moving to boarding school and I felt the loneliness, the quietness, the dependable fact of change and the swift passage of time. I cried. I yelled. I immersed myself in imaginary characters to deal with stress and emotions. The point is – I felt. I felt a lot and I felt often. Experiencing extreme emotions was an essential part of being Iona, and when that part disappeared I knew something was wrong. . . There are many aspects of our lives that are lonely. No one will be able to understand your exact interpretation or experience. With TCKs I think this can be even more profound. We’re told to relate and understand so much about a variety of cultures but when it comes to understanding ourselves we can be at a loss – as can others. . . I want to be honest with this post because I don’t believe there’s enough honesty about mental illness in our world. I am not writing this from a place of healing. I have not ‘recovered’ from depression.”

No, I am not an Asian-American
Technique
This post talks about Third Culture experiences and identity, and how that identity is misunderstood by others.
“I am Filipino by ethnicity and by nationality: I speak Tagalog and I eat Filipino food, but I have never lived in the Philippines. I was born in Singapore. From there, we moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. We ended up in Paris, France, for a while and then found ourselves in Moscow, Russia, before moving to Houston, Texas, where I lived for eight years before moving to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech. I was raised in a hybrid “typical Asian” family and a Westernized family dynamic. . . I am a “third-culture” individual and a first-generation immigrant to America. I am not an Asian-American. . . I only sound and act American because that’s how I learned to survive and thrive in other countries — to immerse myself truly and fully in the native culture, while still maintaining my Filipino heritage.”

Spoken Word Poetry – Don’t Keep Your Distance (Do You Know How Many Times I Have Moved?)
CulTure miKs
And finally, a beautiful spoken word poem that starts like this:
“Do you know how many times
I have moved?
Sometimes I count them on my fingers,
fistful after fistful of tears
swollen in my throat and I try
to remember every single one
but I can’t.”