Sharing the TCK Experience Through Design
Ever wish someone handed you a “welcome kit” to TCK-dom? Well, Alicia Ingruber may have created one for future Third Culture Kids.
All posts tagged: Australia
10 Ways You Know You’re Dining with a Global Nomad
We’ll try almost anything at least once. Scottish haggis? Bring it on.
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 …
Under fire: why we’re targets and what we can do about it
In today’s world, we’re targeted for many reasons. Most of the time it’s as simple and obvious as where we’re from. We’re singled out because we represent our passport countries, even though many of us have barely lived in them (if at all).
Part 1: TCK goes to college
I was 17 when I started college in Florida; just months away from being able to legally enter, but not drink at, a club or a bar. Because I had been living in Shanghai the last four years, I didn’t have a driver’s license – only a passport, and my American diplomat card. I got away with acting like a dumb freshman girl who “forgot” my ID a few times, but when my friends and I attempted to go out dancing one night, my ego was completely shot. “Where’s your ID,” the bouncer demanded. “Well, I have this,” I took out my diplomat ID. “My birthday’s right here.” He looked at it puzzled, squinting at the Chinese characters. “What is this? Don’t you have a driver’s license?” Um, no sir, that requires the ability to drive. “My birthday’s right there,” I pointed, hoping maybe he’d just let me in. “No, I can’t take this, I can’t even read this.” He threw it back and me and took the next person in line. I was furious. …
You’re so isolated! Expat communities explained.
How is it possible to live abroad, without ever really living abroad at all? Most TCKs have spent some portion of their life in an expat community. These havens from culture shock are a staple in any modern metropolis, isolating wealthy expats from their host cities by allowing them to transplant their home culture abroad. This article will focus on American expat communities. Sarah Whitten, 21, grew up in the expatriate community in Tokyo, Japan. Attending the American school there, she watched expats hang out at the American embassy, eat American food at the bases, enjoy American music and TV, and spend most of their weekends at the Tokyo American Club. “There are also homats… nice apartments that are geared toward expats only – probably no Japanese families live there,” she said. “Unless the expat family members take interest in the culture and immerse themselves in it, they can completely isolate themselves from it because they have everything they need accessible to live a totally American life.” Andrew McWilliam, 20, an expatriate who went to …
Denizen 