Allergic to my ‘Home country’
My ‘home country’, according to my passport, is Switzerland. My ‘heart country’ is Taiwan (generally speaking; I do change my mind). I usually only go to Switzerland once every two years to visit my grandparents, and here’s a list of weird ‘home country’ occurences:
- Getting sick. Usually colds, hayfever, fever, but lately I have had stomach problems too - which in Taiwan, I actually never have! Here, I can eat weird stuff like fish eggs, animal innards (only once - never again), and all kinds of things, and I don’t have a problem at all. Last year, I was sick for a whole week in Switzerland and completely lost my appetite!
- Forgetting about Sundays. I don’t have to do the shopping yet, thankfully, but I wonder what will happen to me when I have to move to Switzerland in one and a half years! The shops in Europe close way too early, and on Sundays there’s absolutely nothing to do! At least in the village it’s like this, but even in Lugano, my grandmother sometimes sends me to the nearby supermarket in a rush at 5 or 6 in the evening to buy some last-minute things before Sunday.
- Too quiet and too dark. Night time in Taiwan is like daytime with electric lighting. Night time in Europe is scary!! In the village, even daytime is so silent that it rings in my ears and I hear the flies buzzing in the next room and the cows from two kilometres away! The first time I went to Switzerland, when I was about 1 year old, I couldn’t sleep because the usual busy-road lullaby was missing
- Feeling unsafe. I live in a huge city on an island which has a few Chinese missiles directed on it, just in case it decides to declare independence. When I was 5 (1996) there was actually a crisis that almost started a war, but I’ve never felt more safe than in Taiwan! In Europe, I’m scared of the dark, I’m scared of going out on the streets alone, I’m scared of teenagers and young people (yesh, I think like an old lady) and I’m scared of burglars coming in at night.
I guess there’s more too, but I can’t think of any other points just now
I wonder, does anyone else have such weird ‘allergies’ as well??
Desiree Dippenaar
Hello~ I am a second generation missionary kid, third generation TCK, and from mixed background. My mother is Swiss, my father South African, and I was born in Taiwan. I have never lived outside Asia except for two years in Germany.Related Posts
8 Comments to “Allergic to my ‘Home country’”
May 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am
hey Desi,
thanks for sharing the weird allergies!
For me, when I go to Korea one of the first things I sense is the air pollution in the city. My eyes got itchy when I moved from Takasaki, Japan to Seoul, Korea. But then when I visited Seoul after having lived in US I did not have any physical reactions to the smog. But I definitely sensed that the air wasn’t as clean there as where I had been living in the US.
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May 9th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Desi,
So much of what you said is really familiar to me. I am most definitely ‘allergic’ to my ‘home’ country. I’ve been living in Italy for the past 8 years (the longest I’ve ever lived in one single place), supposedly my ‘home’ country only because I have the passport, but I’ve never felt so ‘foreign’ before. You’d think that as a veteran TCK who’s lived in 7 different countries, I’d have learned how to integrate by now, but it’s just not happening. I’ve come to accept that this country will never be my home, which is fine, because I don’t like it anyway, but I admit I’m kind of angry with myself for ‘failing’ to get used to it. I mean, I’ve done it so many times before, but I just can’t seem to get used to this place. It’s gotten to the point where just so that I can be in another country, even for just a few hours, I hop on the train and head to Lugano. You’re right. It’s eerie how dead the streets are at night here(and I live in a major city!) and I hate the fact that everything is closed on Sundays.
As for hay fever, I have noticed that it only tends to happen in certain countries. I never had it until I moved to London. My Dad told me that it’s because the vegetation is different in each place, and people are susceptible to different strains of it.
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May 9th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Yes - the allergies are a big issue for me, and I always think it’s because I grew up in the tropics and my body adapted to that flora and fauna, and now I live in the northwest US and I’m allergic to EVERYTHING.
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May 10th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Hi Desi,
I too found out being allergic to pollens here, and I couldn’t believe it; like jen-h I grew up in the tropics, and I thought the pollen there was ’stronger’ because it was from exotic plants. Right now there is a small heat-wave here, and the plants are exploding… it’s been a miserable few days.
About the other points you make, I still feel something weird about ‘towns’ and ‘cities’ here. Italians call big cities the likes of Vincenza, Padova, Udine, etc. and perhaps in terms of size they are, but I cant’ help calling them ‘big small-towns’.
There is a handful of places with more of a city feeling to them, like Trieste or Rome; but they just seem small in size so I call them ’small big-cities’.
Cheers,
Ezio
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May 10th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Hi Serena,
I read about your Italy experience; it’s very similar to mine’s. My parents are both Italians, but still I can’t call it home after all these years. I too accepted I’m not Italian, and yet I can’t dislike it completely (even though at times I hate it). I too have an un-easy feeling about Sundays in Italy: I just don’t like the ‘ritual’ of ‘Passeggiata domenicale’ in the city’s main square.
You write you once a while go to Lugano; are you somewhere up in the North? I’m in the NorthEast, in Trieste.
Cheers,
Ezio
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May 20th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Ohhh I have that issue too! Towns and cities in Europe all seem so small to me because I’m used to metropolis places like Taipei where you get lost once you leave your district. I think the district of Taipei where I live is larger than the capital city of Switzerland, in fact… definitely has more people, though, because here the population density is like 1 person per square metre. Rather squashy
What I find really interesting is cities with pedestrian areas, where no cars are allowed to go. They somehow make the city seem so much more village-like because it’s so quiet - here you can’t even go into a dead-end dark narrow side-street without almost being run over by a motor scooter or two
The criteria for naming ‘cities’ and ‘towns’ in Europe really are weird. There’s one ‘city’ with I think 20′000 people. Which in Asia is rather puny!
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May 20th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
You know, it’s funny, but same here.
I get sinus infections all the time (thanks, China), but last summer I went to India (first time abroad in nine years), and nothing. Not a cough. Not even a sniffle.
Plus, I was drinking the water, I swam in the Ganges, I even swallowed some of the Ganges, and nothing. But then I go to Lake Michigan and get Giardia!+
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June 4th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Hear, hear!
1. This year was the first time that I’d experienced Spring in 13 years. Flowers blooming. Pollen everywhere. It was HORRIBLE! I’ve never been allergic to anything in my life, and then I met Spring
Also, the meet here does funny things to my stomach sometimes
2. Back in Saudi…we didn’t even go out until 8:30 pm! No one ever did anything during the day time. Shopping, social gatherings, etc, were always done during the evening. The city came alive at night. During the day it was more like a ghost city :p
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