The Secret Downsides Of Being A Third-Culture Kid

Looking at people that never travelled and still live in the same country they were born in, can sometimes be a positive thing and a negative thing. First, these people have more stability in their lives, they have more constant friends, and usually a stable community. And the negative side is that they will never experience what I have experienced.

The negative part about being a Third-Culture Kid or in this case a Global citizen is that I will never have that stable life. Travelling can have a big effect on friendships, as people tend to prefer friendship to be stable. I know that there are other negative aspects about being a Third-Culture kid, but this topic is very important to me as it affected me personally.

The problem with being a third culture kid or a global citizen, when I leave a country, I usually lose some friends, even friends that I was very close with, maybe because I’m no longer around, and they have other things to do than remembering that they once knew someone called Mostafa.

For example some of my very close mates back from school in Egypt, after I travelled to Scotland, some never got in contact with me until this day, and the rest used to get in contact with me every once a month, and after a year these “once a month messages” starting to be every 6 months, usually asking me when I’m going to be visiting, and then these 6 months became a year or 2, sad I know. Some of these friends, I still haven’t seen in the past 5 years, but at least we get in contact occasionally.

But the important thing is, you start losing friends from where you left and start making new ones in the country you moved to.

The reason i consider myself a Third-Culture Kid (Part 2)

The reason I consider myself a Third-Culture kid is that not only was I born in a house with a variety of cultures, but because I’ve lived in different countries, with completely different cultures.

I was born in Cairo, Egypt, I got to live there for 7 years, until my dad got a job in Bahrain, so we had to move there to stay with him.

We only stayed in Bahrain for 2-3 years, the culture over there was very vague for me not only because I was young, but because I went to an international school, with so many nationalities, I didn’t even interact with locals to be able to learn from their culture. Majority of people I’ve interacted with were either British teachers or friends with different nationalities.

After living in Bahrain for over 2 years, we decided to go back to Egypt, where there I went to 5 different schools, which emphasises the idea of constant change/travel I experienced. Of course, I was exposed to many new people/friends, each had different traditions and mindsets.

These past experiences and constant change helped me later when I travelled to Scotland, again surprise surprise, we moved there because my dad got a job.

In Scotland, I got to experience a whole new culture. The culture here was almost the opposite to the one in Egypt, but there were still some similarities. The thing about being Third-Culture kids is that we tend to be a Culture Chameleon, thus, I managed to adapt to the new culture.

The only difficulty was the Scottish accent, this took a while, I’ve been taught English since I was a child. But when I came to Glasgow, it took me a good 2 months to even understand what the teacher was saying in class, I spent those 2 months nodding to anything that was being said or asked.

Nevertheless, the journey doesn’t end here in Scotland, I’ve been planning my whole life to go to Germany, so this year I’ve planned to go live there, then come back to Scotland for my final year of university.