You know you’re a TCK when ..

And to round up my previous post, a list of 31 points on how to know if you are a TCK. I found it on one of the websites and had a good laugh reading it. It hold true for me in 28 points.

- “Where are you from?” has more than one reasonable answer.

- You flew before you could walk.

- You speak two languages, but can’t spell in either.

- You feel odd being in the ethnic majority.

- You have a passport but no driver’s license.

- You go into culture shock upon returning to your “home” country.

- Your life story uses the phrase “Then we moved to…” three (or four, or five…) times.

- You wince when people mispronounce foreign words.

- You don’t know whether to write the date as day/month/year, month/day/year, or some variation thereof.

- You think VISA is a document that’s stamped in your passport, not a plastic card you carry in your wallet.

- You own personal appliances with 3 types of plugs, know the difference between 110 and 220 volts, 50 and 60 cycle current, and realize that a trasnsformer isn’t always enough to make your appliances work.

- You fried a number of appliances during the learning process.

- Half of your phone calls are unintelligible to those around you.

- You believe vehemently that football is played with a round, spotted ball.

- You consider a city 500 miles away “very close.”

- You get homesick reading National Geographic.

- You cruise the Internet looking for fonts that can support foreign alphabets.

- Your minor is a foreign language you already speak.

- When asked a question in a certain language, you’ve absentmindedly respond in a different one.

- You miss the subtitles when you see the latest movie.

- You speak with authority on the subject of airline travel.

- You have frequent flyer accounts on multiple airlines.

- You constantly want to use said frequent flyer accounts to travel to new places.

- You know how to pack.

- You have the urge to move to a new country every couple of years.

- The thought of sending your (hypothetical) kids to public school scares you, while the thought of letting them fly alone doesn’t at all.

- You think that high school reunions are all but impossible.

- You have friends from 29 different countries.

- You sort your friends by continent.

- You have a time zone map next to your telephone.

- You realize what a small world it is, after all.

A few changes

I haven't been writing, I know. Things have been a little busy lately... But during the last month I had an interesting realization concerning the blog. 
I kept wondering what the whole blog was about. It was just me scribbling some random thoughts on my travels, and places I have lived, and culture, and cultural differences. All interesting topics, but I could not find a common denominator other than myself. But then I came across this thing called TCKs, Third Culture Kids, and I realized that is EXACTLY what the blog is about.
So what is a TCK? It is "someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture." I won't go into all the details about being a TCK now, but you will get the picture from reading this blog. And if you crave some quick knowledge there is always wikipedia, an online TCK community, online classes for TCKs, and a really great book.