TCK: Where I Come From

Today marks a new monthly blogging challenge called Blogtember, hosted by Story of My Life blog. Which means that some days this month you will be seeing more than one post a day as I have other regular scheduled posts.  If you are also participating in the link up, let me know in the comments so I can view your post too!


Day 1 of Blogtember. Today's prompt asks that you describe where or what you come from. The people, the places, and/or the factors that make up who you are.

Fact. I have not lived in one place longer than three years at a time since the time I was born.  I am now thirty years old. Through out my nomadic existence I have been asked by people all over the world the same seemingly simple question:

"Where are you from?"

Insert the sound of crickets. Or the sound of a sigh from my lips as I pause and try to quickly determine just what length of an answer the person before me requires to move on in our conversation.  Perhaps this time I can just say 'everywhere' and softly laugh as I flick my hair back behind my shoulders with a twinkle in my eye. Leaving just enough mystery in my vague answer that it suffices for the moment. 

It really depends on what country I am in, where the person who is asking the question is from, and just how much time we may spend in conversation that determines a rough idea of what I may say.  Since I currently live in England I shall give you an example of how it normally has gone since we moved here in 2011. 

"Where are you from?"
"I live here in Bath, " I reply as I assume they think I am here on vacation. 
"Oh. Where did you live before here?"
"All over. My husband was in the military and my father before him."
"So where are you from?"
"Well I was born here in Oxford."
"Really? But your accent..."
"Is American. I know. I have had an English accent twice in my life once in Oxford and then when we moved back to England around the Norfolk area."
"So how come you have an American accent?"
"My parents are American."
"So you grew up mostly in America?"
"Not really. I grew up moving around Europe until I was seventeen."
"Well...where are your parents from?"
"My dad grew up in New Jersey but he left at seventeen to join the USAF and had moved around ever since. My mum has lived in a few different states as her parents were part of a churching planting group."

A pause as my answer really has not clarified where I call 'home' or from where my accent originates.

"I am dual citizen though, since I was born in England and it is why I wanted to move back. I do not really see America as my home since I did not grow up there."

The question now as resolved as it can be and I will be referred to after that moment as 'the American'. 

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I have started referring to John Barrowman now that I live in a country that knows of the actor who starred in Doctor Who and its spinoff, Torchwood.  He is Scottish and retains that accent when conversing with his family members. However his main accent is an American one that he picked up as a child when his family moved to live in the US.  Basically after being teased enough with a Scottish one he realized to fit in he would have to sound like everyone else.  As an actor he is known by his American accent. 

My theatre professor at my University asked me where I was from because he could pick up regional dialects from all over the country, and places from which I have never lived. However like a sponge I have picked up how to say words and phrases from the people I have spent much time around. In the military world that encompasses people from all over.  

My accent and 'home' aside I am made up of all the places, the people, and cultures from which I have come in contact with throughout my life.  My world view, the way I relate to people, and the person I am to the core has been molded by generations of people from multicultural backgrounds.  I have a chameleon soul that picks up little things from the people around me.  It would be nice to have an easy answer that people could understand.  I could say I was from Los Angeles, California and people could right away put me in a box and see me a certain way and know me by not just a single nationality but a particular region in a state. Being a nomad is the only thing I know as it has been my entire life and I would not ask for it to be any other way. 

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If you would like to know more about Third Culture Kids, check out my post on TCKs



42 comments:

  1. Great post and I love how you also blogged about a place(s) rather than people, I guess in a way though when saying a place it is comprised of many people rather than a set group like a family.
    I am like you too with accents and my husband is always laughing how I will randomly say a certain word with a weird accent!

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  2. Yes...my husband does that too. We do a lot of making fun of each other (with love) in my family and when I say something odd he pokes fun. Course when my husband slips into an English accent I go all weak in the knees. haha.

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  3. I can relate to this so much. When someone asks me where I am from, I don't know if I should even start the entire list or just say where my parents live (where I used to live). Usually I can interpret what answer they want to hear, but just wondering how I should answer annoys me. I don't want people thinking of me in a 'she lived there and there'-kind of way, I want to be seen as Susanne, who just happened to live there and there.
    A couple of years after we moved 'back' to the Netherlands, people who just heard about me living in the US would say "Yes, I can hear that." And sometimes I still get that, but fortunately my Dutch isn't being influenced by my English anymore, unfortunately it is the other way around...

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  4. Yay for TCKs! I can't quite claim that title, since I didn't grow up outside the country in which I was born, but my mom is from Honduras and we were raised with a lot of Hispanic elements in the downriver area of metro Detroit, where people are usually raised to grow up and live in the same town and aren't very culturally aware. And then we moved to an area of metro Detroit that's filled with diversity and it felt a lot more like home.

    So I can identify a little bit with not knowing how to answer the question of where I'm from. I feel like I'm from Honduras even though I'm not; I wasn't born there, I didn't live there. But I don't always feel like I can say I'm from Michigan because I feel like it boxes me into having had the typical American childhood and experience and I by no means had that. I love how you phrased it: "I am made up of all the places, the people, and cultures from which I have come in contact with throughout my life."

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  5. Loved your post Bonnie. It is so true how people want to put everyone in a box and have a nice and tidy version of someone ~ this is usually so that they can make a quick snap decision on "who you are" but it often is not that simple. I loved your explanation and thoughts about it. Keep being the chameleon soul nomad that you are! xx
    I am going to do Blogtember as well. It looks like fun and I am hoping it will get me blogging more! Wish me luck!

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  6. I can totally relate to this. My dad was a TCK and we were raised in America and Europe. So I never really know how to answer "where are you from?"

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  7. These days, people ask me all the time, "Are you from around here?" and to keep things simple, I just evade the question and say, "I live here now!"

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  8. I'm not exactly a TCK since I only grew up in Canada and the US, but I moved around a lot as a child and it does shape you in so many different ways. I also learned how to pick of different accents wherever we were because the kids would make fun of me. I did a guest post talking of my gypsy childhood at With Love, Rachel http://www.withlove-rachel.com/2013/08/my-small-ray-of-sunshine.html


    Can't wait for more Blogtember posts :)
    xx
    mysmallrayofsunshine.blogspot.com

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  9. Love the Venn Diagram idea! Way to go for today's prompt!

    -Gab☮

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  10. Oh, the dreaded "where are you from" question. We bounced around the states when I was a kid, so answering that part is easy for me if folks want it narrowed down to a country. After college, though, it goes all over the place. The same with my husband. We just kind of answer with the place of the moment, but then that turns into, "so did you grow up here" and cue the sighs. :)

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  11. Can totally relate, though I don't have the world wide response that you have (definitely a little jealous). I always tailor my response to whomever I'm talking to at the time as well and when I'm in England, I never say "I'm from New York" because after that I can never convince them I'm *not* from NYC. I still have a bit of a Minnesotan accent, even though I only ever lived there 4 years. And I almost always pick up on my friends southern twang a bit since I went to school in Ohio and a lot of students were from the south. But when in England, most people can't place me because I'm usually too quiet and alter a few words enough to sound "not quite american, not quite English."

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  12. Not a tck, but feel I can relate somewhat since most of my adult years have been abroad. Having my own tcks, I'll be interested to see how they feel (and answer) this question as they get older.

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  13. I am not a TCK, so can only imagine how difficult it is to answer that question. I like your diagram and post as it helped me understand it a bit more too!

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  14. I loved reading your post! I'm not a TCK (I was born and raised in Austin, TX), but it was so cool to read what it's like for you when someone asks you that question. I'm doing Blogtember too and I'm excited to read more of your upcoming posts! www.sabrinanicoleblog.net

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  15. The dialogue really made me smile (as well as your entire post for that matter). It's quite amusing when someone is trying to figure you out or or put you in a little box, is it not? I'm not quite sure why we always want things in neat little boxes when in fact nothing is that simple, nor should it be.
    This post also made me smile because when I was a child, I wanted to be you. I always thought being the new kid, having a different accent and like traveling from place to place would make me sooo interesting. And I was obsessed with not being boring back then (although as an adult I have become quite boring in fact lol). I even faked a really bad british accent during my Spice Girls period :)
    Thanks for writing this!

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  16. i love hearing other's views on where they consider home. every place that you live can have a significant impact on your life and who you become in the future. excellent post as always bonnie!

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  17. Hi Bonnie! I've been lurking around your blog for awhile and was so excited to see that you were participating in Blogtember. You really do embody the "nomadic" lifestyle and it sounds fascinating. Looking forward to your posts this month!

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  18. I love your Venn diagram as an explanation! :o) I can understand this well, and it actually bothered me for awhile after we returned to the States after living in Singapore. I had lost my southern American accent and had developed a more region-free American accent. You wouldn't think that something as simple as an accent would trigger feelings of not knowing where you belonged or fit in, but it does. My Tennessee friends would make fun of me for sounding like a northerner (I didn't, but because they knew I didn't sound like them, I MUST be a Yankee.) and so I tried to get my southern accent back, but it never felt natural. I love your chameleon analogy - it's a very good way to explain what living in many places does for a person.

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  19. Your posts have helped me so much discover who I am. I may not have a French passport ( yet) but France is my home. I may be British and American, and have to wear whatever labels one gives me, but one can never tell me where home is, or even (I've found) what my nationality is. I will always crave the wandering world. I will always want to be in many places at the same time. Powerful, that is all I can say Bonnie!

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  20. I have a post just like this planned! When people ask me where I am from, I never know where to say. If they are specific like, "where were you born" or "where do you live" then that's easy, but where I'm from, well that's an entirely different story altogether :) x

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  21. It would be nice if there would be a way to just say 'I'm Susuanne' and that would be enough. But with the TCK and expat world expanding and the world in turn becoming smaller, i bet one day it will be. :) x

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  22. Theres a term I found a while back of Cross Cultural Kids CCK I think is what it was, but def sounds like it fits you. Its def something we can all relate on with identifying to different cultures. :) It is shame that people put people in boxes like that. So glad to have gotten to know more about you through this post Annie! x

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  23. Sweet, you will have to let me know when it goes live so I can share it on twitter!

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  24. I am so glad I could have helped. I said it before on facebook, but it truly is the reason why I blog. It is so great to have a community like this!

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  25. Thank you I saw something similar somewhere and wanted to make one specific to my background. In the military world TCKS are not a widely known term. So it was nice to put something out that reflected that. Accents are so interesting aren't they?

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  26. Glad to have you lurking around Erika! Hope you like the sequential blogtember posts, I really love these monthly challenges! x

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  27. Thank you Chelsea for your encouragement!

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  28. Oh yes, little neat boxes. But life is never that neat. :) haha, I loved the spice girls! So glad that you really liked this post and that inspired you! x

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  29. So glad you enjoyed this post on TCKs for Blogtember! I love hearing how others live their life and so its nice to know people love reading about this life too. :) x

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  30. I am glad you enjoyed this. Its nice to inform and tell people a little about what it is like as a TCK.

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  31. It is nice how living abroad or outside your home country can really impact your life and change you forever more. It will be interesting with raising TCKs. I know I find every day with my kids interesting. :)

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  32. Accents are so interesting! Its sad cause they can define us, and the world is so much bigger than that. I totally get that 'not quite american, not quite english'. My husband's accent has been changing and sometimes he will get asked if he is irish, and to me sometimes he sounds canadian.

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  33. Yep! Cue the sighs...i know that too well. I try to bypass that as quick as possible and ask a question to get them on to something else. :)

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  34. Thank you Gab! I just love Blogtember. x

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  35. It really does, and I think moving a lot can be so beneficial! thank you for sharing the link I will check that out! x

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  36. Yep, thats what you gotta do sometimes. :) Love having you as a reader Rachel. x

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  37. I love that this brought all the TCKs out of the wood work ;) Its nice to know that there are us out there that can understand and makes our world much smaller! x

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  38. Thank you Gina! Thank you for encouragement it makes me want to write so much more on this topic when I get comments like this. I am glad you are doing Blogtember too! x

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  39. I've been seeing a lot of posts like this lately! I have always struggled with my identity and where my home is. My parents are Italian and German, but I grew up American in the USA. We moved non-stop and then finally settled in Charlotte, NC for 12 years. I then started moving around like crazy yet again for the next decade. Surprisingly, I'm not back in Charlotte trying to put down roots. It still doesn't feel like home though!

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  40. I just discovered your blog Bonnie, and I am really impressed with your perspective on life and with your photographic work. This post in particular is enlightening, worldly and beautifully written. Thanks for sharing your story.

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  41. I can relate. My father is a diplomat at the Ethiopian foreign service, I spent six years in England, one in Egypt, nine in Ethiopia and three in the USA. My accent is vaguely British and usually elicits "so you're from south Africa right?" lol.

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I love to interact with my readers and I try my best to respond back to all comments.

Cheers,
Bonnie Rose

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