-
Welcome to Third-Culture Thoughts!
This blog is dedicated to all Third-Culture Individuals who feel like their different life experiences detach them from their own communities. Each post will begin with a prompt, followed by a reflection-style response. What is a Third-Culture Individual? Third-Culture Individuals (TCIs), more commonly known as Third-Culture Kids (TCKs), are individuals who were raised in a…
-
“I’m a TCI, I was forced to go by a different name because my original is ‘too hard to pronounce’”
I moved to Canada when I was in 8th grade. I didn’t know that my move here would force me to adopt a new persona. My “Fresh of the Boat” family settled in Abbotsford for our first few years in Canada. It was very evident that we had become the new additions to a predominantly…
-
“I’m a TCI, of course I was embarrassed to bring food from my native country to school”
I didn’t know what “ethnic food” was until I came to Canada. For me, the categorization of food was determined by the country of origin, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai… That’s how I knew them, never generalized as “ethnic”. So when I brought my lunch to school one day in 7th grade, I became the center of…
-
“I’m a TCI, even if I was born here, my parents still sheltered me from other cultures”
I spent my early years growing up in Newton, a district in Surrey dominated by the Indian community. When I came of age to start going to school, my parents enrolled me in a school that was catered specifically to the Indian community. Which means all my classmates were brown and spoke Punjabi all the…
-
“I’m a TCI, I constantly compare the standard of living of my home country to the current country I reside in”
Having lived in both a “developing” and “developed” country, I’ve always found myself unconsciously comparing the standard of living of the Philippines and Canada. There are many privileges I’ve experienced in both countries but those privileges are vastly different. The political and socio-economic environments are also very different, and that’s highlighted by the different physical…
-
“I’m a TCI, of course I have different English accents”
“You just moved here? Your English is so good!” was the phrase I heard the most for the first 2 years of living in Canada. English as a spoken language came very easily to me. My best subjects in school were always grammar, literature, and social studies. I guess people were just surprised with how…