Ladies and gentlemen,

I present to you, Interaction International’s first YouTube production…

Come on over, and give it a watch!!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Greetings fellow TCKs and ATCKs,

Over the past many months, I’ve been developing the beginning of a very important project, and as of early this morning, just after midnight (Seattle Time), Interaction International’s International Therapist Directory was launched LIVE online. Check out the initial version here:

http://www.interactionintl.org/resourcesite.asp

And if you know of any qualified therapists who have a solid understanding of the TCK and expatriate experience, please forward them the link and my contact information (joshsandoz@interactionintl.org) to help us grow this site!!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Janet Blomberg, Executive Director of Interaction International, will be in Thailand from February 27th – March 6th, 2009. If you would like to be in touch, email her at janetblomberg@interactionintl.org.

Popularity: unranked [?]

In my work with Interaction International, I have received enough requests for referrals for professional therapists in various parts of the world, that I am thinking it’s time to put some serious energy to compiling a list of professional therapists around the globe who are sensitive to TCK matters and the expatriate experience. This will be an ongoing work in progress, hosted on the Interaction International website (www.interactionintl.org), and I’d like to ask for your help.

If you happen to know of any therapists that you would recommend be included in such a directory, I would greatly value your input.

Basic information that would be really helpful would be:

Name:
Location: (city and country)
Contact Information:

Then the following could be helpful bonus information, but not necessarily essential:

Nationality:
Languages Spoken:
Religious Affiliation:
Clinical Specialties:

Please email all responses to joshsandoz@interactionintl.org.

Thanks for your help!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Libby Stephens, Director of TCK Services at Interaction International, will be in Tianjin, Beijing, & Qingdao, China from January 9-25, 2009.

If you’d like to contact her, email: libbystephens@interactionintl.org.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Libby Stephens, Director of TCK Services at Interaction International, will be in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA from January 5-6, 2009.

If you’d like to contact her, email: libbystephens@interactionintl.org.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Janet Blomberg, Executive Director of Interaction International, will be in Niamey, Niger from January 5-15, 2009.

If you’d like to contact her, email: janetblomberg@interactionintl.org.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The following is an article written by Ruth Van Reken about Barack Obama’s TCK and cross-cultural upbringing. No matter your politics, it’s a great article. Pay it a visit, and leave some comments! This is a wonderful way to bring a greater awarness to the TCK experience.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/obamas-third-culture-team/

Popularity: 1% [?]

One thing I’ve come to know about myself over the course is that I have a fairly significant sac of grief that lies mostly hidden within me, rather contained, much like a third lung, or a second stomach, or more accurately – my gall bladder’s twin pustule. Or wait – what if it’s more like a uterus?! Hmmmm… anyway, it’s there. And for the most part, like the majority of all other internal organs, it goes about its existence under-acknowledged until something comes along and upsets its delicate state of hard-earned equilibrium. That considered, it’s been of great interest to me to observe what kinds of things bring about such upset. And here, in what follows, is one such note…

It’s usually a story. Occasionally, I happen upon a particular brand that manages to tear into my visceral grief-sac, catching and ripping, spilling a lament of familiar heartache all throughout my bloodstream, not unlike adrenaline, or antibodies, or chronic leukemia.

Last week one day – it was raining – I was driving down James to get onto I-5 when a story came on NPR that left me sloppy and raw, teeming and alive. It was the story of an elderly African American woman who had dreamt for decades of serving in the Peace Corps but had stayed in the U.S. out of loyalty to her family. Finally, upon retirement from her job of 30-plus years, her children raised and grown, she in her late sixties up and moved in the name of world peace and friendship to the country of Namibia for some long awaited years of international living, service, and relief work. This woman talked about how initially the community there did not at all know what to make of her. She was an older black woman, when most every other Peace Corps volunteer the villagers had known were young and white. She was an anomaly, a foreigner of foreigners. But in not too long at all, the community came to enjoy her very much, affectionately referring to her as grandma, offering her their ongoing signs of deepening love and respect. The story culminated when the Namibian villagers, upon hearing that the United States had gone to war with Iraq, came together and after much discussion decided that they wanted to prepare a home for her in the village so she would be able to stay and live with them. Their reason – so she wouldn’t have to go back home to a nation that was at war, so she would be safe, because her country was in trouble and they wanted to help her as she had come to help them. [Ach!] It was at this point in the story that any internal tearing that had already begun in me just ripped loose entirely, and I was awash… capsized in the current.

[pause]

I’ve noticed a theme in the stories that take me so. Very many seem to have all so much to do with being an adult TCK. Having spent the majority of my younger years as an adopted foreigner of sorts, to feel acknowledged as alien yet loved and appreciated all the same is a theme that just hooks me every time. Entire crate-loads of internalized loss and difference are cracked open once again, and my internal grief-sac (or was it a uterus?) gives birth. A seemingly un-reattainable sense of normalcy drafts even further away, like smoke. I choke on tears. I ache for a kind of home that feels remote, slippery, and seldom understood. I ache for a kind of home. I ache.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Greetings from Seattle!

My name is Josh Sandoz, and I’m an adult TCK, born and raised in Seoul, South Korea (with a few years in various parts of the United States occasionally tucked in here and there along the way). After graduating from Seoul Foreign School, I came to the United States (the country of my citizenship) for university. It was that first summer back that I attended a Transition Seminar, led by Dave Pollock, hosted by Interaction International. I then attended Taylor University, where I eventually met my wife (also a TCK). After finishing our degrees we remained local for a handful of years before moving to Seattle, where I have recently completed graduate studies in counseling psychology at Mars Hill Graduate School. Over the last ten years I have enjoyed volunteering with Interaction International for multiple summer Transition Seminars, walking alongside other TCKs transitioning to life in the United States and Canada. This year, I formally joined the staff at Interaction International as the Director of ATCK Services.

Interaction is committed to:

• Meeting the needs of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) as children and as adults with families
• Meeting the needs of parents who are raising and educating their children overseas
  
• Assisting international schools as they educate and care for TCKs
  
• Equip those people who work with within the expatriate community
• Being a catalyst and a resource in the developing of programs and services to better meet the needs of internationally mobile families and TCKs.

If there is any way I can be of help to you as you venture along in your journey, please don’t hesitate to contact me through any of the following ways:

Tel: (206) 283-0963
Skype: josh_sandoz
Email: joshsandoz@interactionintl.org

Popularity: 1% [?]