Please try and understand us GN
”Hi I’m so and so I”m from xx and where are you from?” Most of us GN (Global Nomads) hate this question, and I’m one of them. If the person asking it is someone who interests me, someone who I want to get to know then I welcome this question because I know it will open a whole conversation. If its part of a ‘’small talk” conversation then I try and keep it simple. But by not saying I was born in Papua New Guinea, and moved to Switzerland when I was 16 and now live in Thailand, I feel like I’m lying about my past. The place where we grow up forms our character. I’m NOT typically swiss, even though every single swiss person thinks he/she isn’t typically swiss, I really AM NOT and for some weird reason its usually very important that people know that. Last week for example, I picked up my daughters friend and I got introduced to an American woman married to a french. I got introduced as Lielie who is from Switzerland. I just smiled and the women went off on long explanation people from different parts of Switzerland don’t get on. I wanted to tell her I’m not really swiss. I was just driving and had to pick up other children and I didn’t’ want to go in to the whole long conversation.
And yet this brief encounter bugs me. I think, GN really want to be understood that we grew up differently. Every human has a need to be understood and we GNs might have it abit more than everyone else. I might be wrong…
38 mother of 3, born and grew up in Papua New Guinea. Passport country Switzerland. Moved there for 12 year now living in Thailand, and LOVING it.
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2 Comments to “Please try and understand us GN”
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:07 am
Don’t you just hate it when people introduce you to others and get your background wrong? I’d rather introduce myself, thank you …
But yeah, I can relate to that - the “small talk” where discussing where you’re from is always a bit complicated and often misunderstood.
Who else doesn’t like being introduced that way? lol
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December 2nd, 2007 at 5:27 am
Just the other night, a drunk friend came up to me and happily yelled “Hey! Chinese!”
I said “Dude, I’m not Chinese!”
“Uhh… Korean! Yeah, Korean!”
“Haha, still wrong. Vietnamese.”
“Ahhhhhh, Vietnamese!”
He proceeded to keep hugging me. Admittedly he was very drunk, so it was just funny.
I was in the uni theater before though, and it annoyed me to hell and back that a friend had written on the programme “Daniel has lived in the US, Indonesia and Vietnam.” I never lived in Vietnam, even though my family is originally from there. Other people said “Ahh, but you come from everywhere”, which is TRUE, but this still really annoyed me.
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