Welcome to another week of Recommended Reading! I’m catching up on some great posts after my month of travel, so this is a mix of newish and oldish posts – but all worth a read!

Blind iftar anyone? Meet new people and enjoy iftar with this cool Ramadan concept in Dubai
Gulf News
Ramadan has begun, and Muslims around the world are fasting, reflecting, and celebrating – including many who are expats! This article features a fun concept happening at a housing complex in Dubai, connecting families who host iftar dinners for their non-muslim neighbours to experience and learn about this Ramadan practice. What a lovely way to build community in the diverse expat world.
“When you share food, you share love and the bond grows automatically. Sharing a table gives us time to talk to each other. The Swedish family had so many questions about Islam and Ramadan. They wanted to know why we fast. And I explained that fasting helped us value life, people, food and to not waste. And iftar is the best way of bringing people closer. It was fun, informal and we had a healthy, informative exchange. I cooked traditional Jordanian food”

6 Reasons Short-Term Friendships Are Worth Your Time
Taking Route
Great post summing up a lot of my own thoughts and arguments about why it’s important to invest in relationships wherever you’re living, no matter how short a time you’ll be there. Seriously, if you’ve ever felt that friendship fatigue, that it might not be worth the effort to make new friends AGAIN, then this is a great post to read. And if you’ve never felt that way before, especially as an expat, I can almost guarantee it’ll happen to you one day – so this is still a great read!
“When you’re an expat, it seems like all your friendships start with a timer. How long until one of you moves? Is it really worth putting the time into building a friendship when there’s already an expiration date on the horizon? Wouldn’t it be easier to just keep acquaintances casual, so it’s easier to say goodbye? Having experienced times of short but good friendships, and also times where I eschewed making new friends in favor of a simpler or quieter life, I can give you the answers up front: Yes, investing in a friendship for a short season is worth it. And no, it isn’t easier to spend a year or two without friends, preparing for the day you’ll move again.”

Rediscovering Myself as a TCK
TCK Town
I loved reading this story of a TCK learning what a “TCK” is for the first time! I’ve heard this story from dozens of TCKs around the world – the moment they realised they belonged to a wider tribe of scattered individuals who GET IT. This can be an incredibly powerful realisation!
“My discovery of the concept of the TCK transformed me. After learning about the existence of others like me firsthand, I felt I firmly belonged to a community, a feeling which I had lacked ever since I started to question my identity, and a feeling that I realized was important. I now feel I am not alone and have people like me with whom I can identify. In short, I feel like I am more firmly part of the world. More importantly, after learning about TCKs, I formed a sense of identity. Now I can describe myself as a TCK, who doesn’t necessarily classify as belonging to a single traditional culture but to a particular global community of people who are “citizens of everywhere and nowhere.””

Third Culture Kids Aren’t a Triangle – They’re a Wave
Wine and Cheese (Doodles)
This is a fascinating piece considering the impact of growing up among cultures – from the perspective of a mother wondering how this will affect her TCK children long term. Great reflections, and well worth a read!
“A recent conversation sucked me, feet first, into the black hole of expat doubt. And by doubt, I really mean: “What the hell is going to happen to my kids at the end of this experiment?”. . . They’re soaking in some weird cultural slop, made up of ingredients from our respective cultures, plus the one they live in, plus the stuff they pick up from living in an international community. And so here they are, teetering on this no-citizen’s-land, picking and choosing what they like and getting rid of the rest. Perhaps in an age when we’re increasingly recognizing gender fluidity, cultural fluidity is not far behind? When my kids go to the US for summer breaks, they morph and flow until they find a comfortable wavelength to inhabit. The same when they do when they reside in Denmark. Or when they go to the UK. A while back there was an excellent commentary about expats and immigrants and their life as a triangle; when you no longer fit where you came from, but not exactly where you live either. The more I think about it, the more I believe that triangle is too angular. It’s too rigid. Perhaps instead of a triangle it should be a wave, fluid and ever-changing. Culture, for my kids, is now a spectrum rather than a shape. It’s a wavelength they exist upon, altering as they see fit.”

Keeping Kids Safe
Expat Parenting Abroad
A short post raising an important topic: child safety. What conversations do you have with your children, to help keep them safe despite engaging in different cultures with different cultural norms – different lines for what is considered normal/appropriate behaviour?
“From the outset, let me just state that nothing sinister happened… but there is learning here nonetheless. . . Someone in a trusted position asked my children to keep something from me!!! Our girls, as you are probably well aware by now, have grown up in Asia spending most of their lives in India. And it is well reported, that girls don’t always receive the same respect in India as other countries and the rates of sexual abuse are quite high. When you live there, it’s reported daily in the local newspaper and more often that not the perpetrator is in a position of trust.”

What’s ‘culture’, anyway?
Tertiary
Really appreciated this little reflection on what culture is, and how it impacts our interactions with others. Dani asks good questions, and invites readers to engage with their own experiences.
“The uncomfortable part is that a lot of cultural indicators are subliminal: you might not even realise that you think or behave in a certain way, because it is so deeply ingrained in your experience of life. . . So it’s no wonder moving to a new country, or working in an international company, or marrying into another culture is so hard! We are all human, we are all valuable, and we all function more or less the same way, but we are all wired a little differently. Out cultures have gifted us with different perspectives and traditions and ways of being, and sometimes those cultures contradict. . . But here’s the key. Your culture is not right. It’s not wrong, by any means, but it is human and that means it’s complex. It means it’s changing, evolving, and adapting to the circumstances around it. The same goes for other peoples’ cultures.”

3 Ways to Improve Your Cultural Fluency
Harvard Business Review
And on the topic of culture, here’s an interesting piece looking at the importance of cross-cultural competency in a corporate setting. Good thoughts, and the lessons apply across many sectors.
“Doug worked with his coauthor Jane, a global leadership strategist, to learn how his behaviors reflected the culture in which he was brought up. He learned that his perspective was heavily influenced by being male and by his American-based value system. Doug had been interpreting situations based on his version of “treating people with respect” without a deeper understanding of how those behaviors landed with his audience. . . Over time, he discovered that people from different cultures (in and outside of the U.S.) interpreted his zealous approach as disrespectful. This discovery led to an ongoing exploration of how to shift his behaviors when engaging with colleagues from diverse backgrounds. After a few years, his cultural fluency in leadership visibly improved.”

Expat Story: “Less is More”
Expat Nest
This piece talks about essentialism – like minimalism but different. What are the things that are essential to you physcially, financially, and mentally? What makes your life easier and less stressful? A great idea when facing yet another international move.
“Like many expats, it sometimes feels like my life consists of moving… right now I’m on eight moves and counting! I don’t enjoy the process of moving, even if the end result is living in a great new country. Just the thought of putting every single thing I own, one by one into boxes, and then having to unpack each item again is daunting. Right before my most recent move, however, I discovered something that might seem scary at first, but that helped me through the packing process and even saved me money: essentialism – the little helper that makes the expat’s life easier. As opposed to minimalism, essentialism is all about owning the essentials, not owning as little as humanly possible. So please do not picture an empty white room!”

My Dearest Switzerland
Remfrey Educational Consulting
And to finish, a sweet little letter written by an expat to the country she lives in. This is a great exercise! Perhaps you might like to try it yourself…
“Switzerland, you have made us one of your own. We are truly and completely yours. We promise to continue to learn more about your culinary abundance. We will continue to discover more corners of your overwhelming landscape through hiking and skiing. And most of all, Switzerland, we will continue to enjoy your company every day.”