You know your're a Third-Culture Kid when you...

1-You can curse in many different languages confidently. And sometimes you slip foreign slang by mistake in conversations  

Some situations in life require cursing out loud, and when you can curse in other languages, it can be a lifesaver.

Sometimes you cannot be bothered by some people, you pass by that person that you hate, and with a very rude smile he/she says good morning or any equivalent, and that’s the time the “multi-lingual cursing” comes to use, you smile back, and say good morning, usually follows with a cursing word.

Cool huh?

I thought so, helps me every day.

2- you can change your accent depending on who you are speaking to

People that know me well, know that for my English, I try to use the Scottish accent so that I can be understood, because when I first came to Scotland I used to speak English in a similar accent to American English, basically no accent. Sometimes I felt that people didn’t understand some stuff, so I started using the Scottish accent, even though it can be shite sometimes, but it does the job. And when I’m speaking to a person that is not from Scotland I would usually go back to the “no accent” English.

3-When it comes to birthdays, you get birthday wishes from family or friends hours before your birthday

As it was my birthday last week, so I can relate to this one, I got birthday wishes and birthday posts from my friends and Family 2 hours before midnight.

4-You have a love-hate relationship with the question "Where are you from?"

This is probably the most common thing that I have experienced, people randomly in conversations ask, “where are you from?”, and I usually think “why does it matter where I’m from?!”, and I tend to have a different answer for every single person.

5- You know that McDonald's tastes extremely different from country to country.

McDonald's tasted very different in every country that I’ve been to.

Tbh McDonald’s in Egypt is way better than the one in Scotland.

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.