Third Culture Kid

I am now a third culture kid. A third culture kid is someone who has spent a portion of their life growing up outside their birth or home country. I lived for a year and three months outside the U.S. And since I moved when I was 16 I was still growing up. And in a sense I am still growing up since I am still learning about new things in college. I understand more than most about Islam and Middle Eastern Politics as I lived in that particular culture. I went to school with kids from all around the world. I was and am spoiled. Vacations for me usually involved going to another country which in my case was Bahrain a wonderful Island Country which I would love to go to again and possibly live there someday.

My Fathers job included great benefits such as full health insurance in Saudi Arabia and my insurance covers half of my costs here in the U.S. so if I have anything drastic I will have to go back to Riyadh, our health insurance provided us with some of the best health care in Riyadh at Kingdom Hospital. In Saudi Arabia it is quite common for hospitals to also include pediatricians practices, dentist practices, and various other medical practices that you would not normally see in a U.S. hospital. Our healthcare practitioners were usually trained at Western Universities in the UK, Europe, Canada, and the US and Australia and New Zealand. We got the latest medical equipment and our Doctors were up to date on the latest medical procedures. As for other benefits we got to live in a wonderful house in a great compound rent free and utility free so we could turn the ac as cold as we wanted without having to worry about how we would be able to afford the electric bill. Schooling was paid for over there though they did not pay for us when we went onto College or University. My Dads salary was tax free, there were no sales taxes over there, copyright laws were not enforced there so it was not too difficult to get movies. Yes there were some drawbacks such as living under Islamic law where in public I could not wear shorts and my Mom and sisters had to wear abayas because of Islamic Modesty laws and we could not easily get pork products as that is considered a dirty animal in Islam because traditionally pigs were fed scraps and garbage and its just a thing that goes back for over a thousand years. We could occasionally get pork products from people who worked at Eskan the US military base which was a bit outside Riyadh the capital city where I lived.

Then there was the food there. They had food from all over the world there because Riyadh is actually a very international city with so many people from various different countries coming to work there they would also bring their food preferences with them so its not hard to get food from all around the world there. I am addicted to a Filipino dish called Panzit which is basically a celophane (a very thin noodle) noodle dish with chicken and nuts or whatever is put in it, schawarma which the greeks ripped off and renamed gyros and changed it a bit, great hummus, and a flat bread called arabic bread (it was round like a tortilla) which is basically a really good version of pita bread and it was great to tear off strips of it and dip it in hummus.

Then there is Arabic music. I realised this morning that I had been listening to Arabic Music all day yesterday. Although I do not speak or read Arabic or understand much of it, I still enjoy listening to it and someday I do hope to learn Arabic. Unfortunately my current college does not offer Arabic language courses and neither does Utah Valley University, which is the school I am transferring to in the fall. They do offer Japanese though so I am going to take that. There are also a lot of languages I am interested in studying so someday I hope to be multilingual. I would like to learn Arabic, Japanese, German, French, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Portuguese. This is obviously going to take me some time to learn all of these languages but imagine being able to converse with people in all of these languages. I think if I learned all these languages I would be in great demand as a interpreter in most places in the world.

As a third culture kid I do not really consider myself American anymore but rather a global nomad. I know that may seem weird as I only lived overseas for a year and three months but you would be surprised at how much you change by living overseas. I typically spell things the British way which is more common worldwide than the American way which as far as I've seen is mostly the U.S. that uses that form and occasionally Canadians will as well. I find that I identify with other nationalities such as Europeans rather than Americans these days.

Then there is my desire to travel and see new things. I have always wanted to travel for years and moving overseas to Saudi Arabia only made my travel bug worse. In fact it mushroomed as a result of living overseas. I'm sorry but I feel that many people in the US have a superiority complex because they have never lived outside the US, let alone been outside the US or North America for that fact. The US is not the greatest country in the world and people need to get their panties out of a twist about that fact!

Yes there are some downsides. For example I live in one country and my family lives in another which can make communication difficult since we live on different continents and in different time zones. International calls are expensive but fortunately there is email, letters, and skype and there are just times when you want to hear a family members voice which is where the phone and skype come into play. It is a bit rough starting college in a different country than where your family lives but it is doable. One of my biggest issues is that I never seem to have any money which I hope to remedy this summer by hopefully being able to find a job in Utah. Once I finish my college degree I will hopefully find a job overseas and move outside North America again. I don't think I could stay here for much longer anymore. Once I finish college I don't know if I could take living in the U.S. anymore. I've had a taste of life outside the U.S. and I want more!

On another note I think I would also like to go to graduate school. Where I am not sure possibly somewhere outside the US or somewhere back in the Eastern part of the US such as Virginia or Maryland. However I first need to work on getting my bachelors degree. My current goal is a degree in History. I would like to be a History teacher and teach World History. One thing I don't get about History degree is that it is mostly U.S. History Classes. That seems rather biased to me. There is so much History in the world that it seems unfair just to focus on History in the US. What about Europe, South America, The Middle East, Asia, and everywhere else in the world? I also think I need to study abroad for a semester or a year so I will need to check out what programs are available in Utah when I get there. First of all though I need money so I will need to get a job asap! I am tired of mooching off my parents and I want to be financially independent.