Why TCKs (Sort Of) Suck at Trivia
Growing up abroad with a limited flow of information meant that our pop culture DNA may be non-existent or slightly flawed. Nothing brings this truth more to light than a night playing trivia in Chicago.
All posts filed under: community
Diagram of a Third Culture Kid
This culture? That culture? A fun Denizen infographic.
Youth Groups: A Home with Satellite Branches
I learned that investing in other people is always worth the effort. Loving is always worth the risk.
10 Ways You Know You’re Dining with a Global Nomad
We’ll try almost anything at least once. Scottish haggis? Bring it on.
Six writing tips for global nomads
Why am I so passionate about helping TCKs get published? That’s simple. TCKs are different from those who have not travelled. You think differently. Y
Dealing with TCK grief and depression
In the tearful process of leaving South Korea after graduating from high school, I can distinctly remember a good friend of mine saying, “Ohhh… it feels like we’re at a funeral!” In many ways, we were. Whether from my own life growing up among worlds or from working with hundreds of TCKs over the past decade at Interaction International, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me how central grief and loss are to the TCK lifestyle. Grief is a very human experience and one that many TCKs begin to know from a young age. The kinds of feelings that come with grief, which is an emotional response to loss, require much care from both self and others, especially considering TCKs often undergo “complex grief,” a phenomenon that can happen when multiple kinds of loss occur all at the same time. Since grief for TCKs can be multifaceted, many find it helpful to spend time intentionally identifying the various and specific losses that have been suffered. Contemplating these losses and allowing the time and space to feel …
How does a TCK define “home?”
It is 5 a.m. and I am sitting in a café at Frankfurt International Airport waiting for a flight that will bring me to the United States in a matter of hours. Eight hours! That is how long a healthy person sleeps at night, how long the train ride from Luxembourg to Hamburg takes, how long a typical day at school is. Eight hours and you can be on a different continent with a completely different culture. It’s nothing new: globalization is bringing people closer together, creating more intercultural relationships and complicating the meaning of “home.” Conventionally, “home” is associated with a geographical location. But, what shapes “home” in a world that is more and more connected? What means “home” to someone who has home everywhere? How does a TCK define “home”? The more I thought about this question, the more it drove me nuts. I had touched upon an issue that is omnipresent in the lives of most TCKs – the question about our roots, about what defines us, about where to go next. …
Faces at FIGT – Kira: “I always tell my story.”
Kira Miller Fabregat, 24, was one of the first Third Culture Kids I spoke to here at the Families in Global Transitions Conference in Houston. A daughter of an Argentine diplomat, she recently graduated with a law degree from the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and has lived in Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, Australia, Trinidad & Tobago and France. What do you say when someone asks you where are you from? My answer is: my family is Argentinean, my mother is from Chile, I was born in Venezuela, my passport says I’m Argentinean. I always tell my story. Why? Because telling the story is showing a part of the person who I am. … If you don’t know I’ve lived everywhere, then it means that you don’t know me at all. You don’t understand me. So I always tell my story. I tell it short, but I tell it. Why are you here at the FIGT conference? I have skills and resources within me that I don’t even know. So I’m here to try to take them …
Faces at FIGT – Deniz: “Make TCKs known to French people too”
Deniz Gyger Gaspoz, 33, is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Psychology and Education at University of Neuchatel. She’s picked a pretty specific course of study: French-speaking, teen Third Culture Kids. During a brief chat at the Families in Global Transition (FIGT) conference, I picked her brain on what she had discovered so far. Deniz, a daughter of Swiss diplomats, speaks French fluently and has lived in Iran, France, Germany, Switzerland, Senegal and India. What do you say when someone asks you, “Where are you from?” If I’m here in Houston, I can say without a problem “Switzerland.” I’ve lived there for more than 8 years. But if Swiss people ask me where I am from, I will have difficulties to answer. I’ll say “Geneva” because I lived there and my family is there. Then sometimes I say Neuchatel [Switzerland] because I study in Neuchatel and I used to live there. And sometimes I say Biel [Switzerland] because I’m living there with my husband. Why does your research focus on French-speaking teenagers? I found …
Faces at FIGT – Josh: “Both an outsider and an insider.”
I started Denizen because I firmly believe that TCKs deserve a support network. Josh Sandoz, 32, is out there doing exactly that. Working toward licensure as a mental health therapist in Washington state, he is currently Interaction International’s (a TCK group) director of child support services, and serves as a therapist in multiple capacities at a local psychiatric hospital and graduate school in Seattle. As part of Interaction International, Sandoz recently started a resource of mental health experts familiar with the TCK and expat experience. What’s your answer to “Where are you from?” It depends where I am, and who is asking me, and what I think they want to know. But usually I’ll re-frame the question and say I was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. How has learning the language of “TCK” helped you embrace your own experience? Words are really powerful. All words, in a way, are metaphors for trying to understand our own experiences. …I liken it to the myth around the Inuit population, to how they have all these …
Denizen 