Introducing…Lara
Hello everyone!
Well I guess it’s time I introduced myself after having spent the past few days surfing this site 
My name is Lara and I’m a fellow TCK, 24 years old, currently living in Germany in the final year of my university course.
I was born in Beaconsfield in England and spent the first five years of my life there before moving to Batu Pahat in Malaysia with my family. We spent three years there due to my father’s contract and travelled a lot during that time. Looking back I can only say that those were the best three years of my life. Once our time was up in Malaysia we stopped off in several other countries before moving back to England. After having settled back down in England it was soon time to move again and this time we left for Germany. We moved to lower Saxony and even changed villages there twice. My parents divorced during this time and my sister and mother went back to England (my sister had always felt more English than German although she is only one year older than me and my mother missed the English culture) whereas I stayed in Germany with my Dad. I didn’t feel English or German but most of my friends were in Germany so I decided to stay. When I started my studies I moved to Bremen and apart from a year abroad in France, I have been living here since. When people ask me where I am from, there are several different answers I can give them: Bremen (where I am currently living), lower Saxony (where I finished school), or England if they ask about my nationality. I hardly ever mention having lived in Asia as people might think I’m trying to brag – only when meeting people from similar backgrounds have I been able to talk freely about my childhood. My sense of belonging has nothing to do with my passport and I can identify with several different cultures. I belong everywhere and nowhere. I like being in England, but my lack of understanding of jokes for example or my extremely creative spelling proves that I missed out somewhere and I feel alienated. Some things from growing up in Asia have also stuck – I automatically feel that it is wrong to point with one’s fingers and it is very rude to give people your left hand. There are lots of examples for these so-called culture gaps, even in Germany, where I have spent the longest period of my life, I can’t relate to children’s programmes or music, traditions… from their formative years.
Some people talk about the negative aspects of being a TCK but I wouldn’t change a single bit of my childhood even if I could. The benefit of speaking several languages and getting to know different traditions and cultures is so very valuable. I used to feel restless occasionally but now I am one of those TCKs that would like to settle down and stop moving around. The idea of moving again doesn’t frighten me, as I know that I will always make friends and be able to cope wherever I go, but I am extremely reluctant to let go of bonds I have created here. My home is where my family is, irrespective of which country they live in, and I hope that once the time has come for me to found my own family I will be able to settle down for a while and at the same time enable my children the same benefits that my parents did.
It’s great to have found a platform for TCKs, I’m glad I joined!
Lara
Lara Goldsworthy
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9 Comments to “Introducing…Lara”
December 19th, 2007 at 8:55 am
hello lara! welcome to tckid. i got here before brice, i feel so sneaky! brice, give lara her obligatory lolcat already!
ya, i like what you said about loving being tck. i mean we moan a bit (probably because for some of us this is the first time we can moan to people who know what we are talking about!) but all in all i think we all live being tck and wouldn’t change it for anything.
i am from botswana, about to marry a swazi and we live in montreal, i am SO excited that our kids are going to be tck!
see you in the chatroom…
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December 19th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Hi Lara, welcome to tckid.
Yeah I agree, I wouldn’t change it for anything either. There are too many pros and you can deal with the cons!
So you’re in England right now? What are you studying and do you plan on settling there?
I’m also a TCK who decided to settle, but I moved from London to settle to Vancouver, Canada … I’m not a big fan of England to be honest.
Well, as the tradition goes.. every newcomer gets a picture welcome and here’s yours!
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December 19th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
hey lara! welcome to tckid.
mmmm, yeah i think i seen you around before.
lol this place is addicting, im telling you. chatroom will keep you away from other stuff haha.
well ttyl lara!
ps: yupp, being a tck’s good, as long as you dont concentrate on the FEW cons =)
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December 20th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Hello Lara welcome here. I agree that being a TCK is great yes we have our problems with life but really who dosn’t and on the whole I think our problems are a lot more interesting.
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January 29th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Hi Lara, today is my first day on here, but hello. I just wanted to say hi as i’m currently living in England (Northampton) and was wondering where abouts you are. I can very much relate to how you feel about missing jokes, etc… I’m always asking what things mean that people say..I’m American but lived in england since i was 10 months old, then back and forth between england and america, but spent four yrs in germany (black forest) during highschool.. I’ve forgotten most of my german though
Nice to meet you 
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January 29th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
hey joy, i’m in London!.. haha.. another poor person roped into the collective suffering that is England! haha… Deutch ay?? We have our german thread.. too bad your german is all but lost, i need someone to proof read my essay! haha… WELCOME by the way!
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February 6th, 2008 at 9:47 am
ha ha, sounds like we feel the same way about this place mate
… But London’s gotta be 10x better than Northampton (not sure how I ended up here, honestly).. I’ve considered moving to London or up north a bit.. got friends in Leeds and Liverpool.. I think I just need to get off this island, how do people live with this weather for their entire lives, everytime it rains/is cold (85% of the time) I want to jump on a plane back to Florida or somewhere tropical.. btw how did u upload your picture, I want to get rid of the duck??? 
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February 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am
ummm can’t remember how i got the photo up hahaha.. isn’t one of the options on the dashboard?? i think… Yeah i’m hoping to get a job with airbus in Toulouse when i finish here haha.. French women won’t know whats hit them haha.. Unfortunately the aerospace industry isn’t big in any tropical nation hahaha….
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February 6th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Welcome Lara!
Completely off topic, I heartily approve of the new rodent line in welcome pictures. Well done!
“I hardly ever mention having lived in Asia as people might think I’m trying to brag” - I know what you mean. I tend to tone down my TCK-ness unless I discover the other person is a TCK too, in which case, no holds barred. I’m not sure why I think it could be misconstrued as bragging(or fishing for sympathy) as neither is my intention, it’s just something I’ve started to do.
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