Rant & Ramble
What in hell, might I ask, has citizenship got to do with where I come from!?
I’m currently taking Danish courses, and everytime we have a new member added to our class, we go round the room saying ‘Hi, my names blah, I come from blah’
When it gets to me, I say ‘Hi, I’m Catherine, and it’s complicated.’
Each and everytime my teacher says ‘but where are you a citizen of? Wheres your passport from’ or like today, ‘where did you live the longest?’
I don’t get why people can’t just accept after MULTIPLE conversations on the same bedamned subject that I DO NOT come from one place, I come from many. Genetically half irish half danish (and thats the simple version of it), but that doesnt cover it for me. For me, I am from everywhere I have lived.
Part of me will always belong to luxembourg
Part of me will always belong to Switzerland
Part of me will always belong to Ireland
Part of me will always belong to Singapore
Part of me will always belong to Denmark
WHAT on earth has a piece of paper got to do with that!?!?
I can live with having to explain just once but in depth to a person where I come from. It can be very annoying sometimes, but damnit if that woman tries categorize me again according to a piece of paper I think I will just snap!
So now shes trying to say I’m luxembourgish because I lived there for 9 years… but I lived in switzerland for 8… GAH! I am incredibly irritated.
On a brighter note I am very excited, I’m going to Dublin for a week. Get to see alot of old friends, which is always great. Being able to see people you care about all over the world always makes being a TCK worthwhile for me.
On another note, I have a question.
I was born and lived in Luxembourg till I was 9 years old. I was reading another post that discussed stability for kids, and I was thinking about how theoretically living in luxembourg for 9 years did give me alot of stability, however, have you ever been to Luxembourg???
It’s one of the most TCK places you can go! When I think about it, as a child, Luxembourg was home, but I was never really from there, as much as part of me will always belong to Luxembourg, I wasn’t Luxembourgish (I hope you all get the distinction here 
). You hung out with people who spoke the same languages, where you were from didn’t make a difference. So in one way it was stable, yet at the same time, it wasn’t really HOME, just where I lived… I’m not sure I make sense. I was born there, and I have a strong connection to that place, I always will, but I was never FROM there. So it was stable, in the fact that I stayed there for a long time, but at the same time it wasnt what ‘normal’ nuclear non-TCK families would call stable I guess…
anyone else live there for a while and get what I mean??
Sorry for the ramble,
Penny for your thoughts on it though!
Cattt
June 4th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Uncle Dan is sooooooo right!
I was thrilled when I realized that you didn’t have to conjugate verbs and learn complex grammatical rules that didn’t apply most of the time( ahem ahem…11 years of French and still insecure when iut comes to grammar) But I realzed that I still needed all that mental room for memorizing charaters. At one point I was like, Do I really have to do this? Being illterate can’t be THAT bad.”
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June 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
i’ve spoken fluent french my entire life but i only learnt to write it when i turned 12…
i remember having an argument with a teacher when i was 11 in an english school
’sorry miss, but I’ve never written or read in french that much, just the basics’
‘So, in reality, your not fluent’
‘ACTUALLY I am’ (in a very obnoxious 11 yr olds voice)
yeah… then she started yelling… and I gave her my spunky attitude in the truck loads…
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June 4th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
… French Grammar was a nightmare to me back in IS. I remember my Tunisian teacher would swear at us in English, then we’d go OOHH, we know what that is miss! So she’s swear in Arabic, and we’d still get it, and she’s swear in French and we still understood. Anyways, auto-dictee anyone? Yes, yes, I was pro at that. But grammar? I sucked at. Okay, I was alright when I *tried* but still.
Arabic, that’s HARD to learn. At least, the writing part is. Reading is another thing. I find that it’s easier to read cause at least you won’t be spending the next 5 mins trying to figure out if the ‘Alef’ is supposed to be connected to the ‘kh’ or something. The letters change when it’s used when isolated, in the middle, and at the start. When reading, well, you read. I find it really easy, no matter how odd the letters are. Although I had that habit of opening my book the english way, when Arabic books open the other way around (right to left). Anyways, the talking part in Arabic.. a lot of my Arab friends say that as long as you can do the ‘throat’ thing, you’re good. Haha. Now, that, I’m great at.
Yeah, Tagalog is a mixture of like 8905390 languages. Haha, it’s good actually. It’s easier to get fluent in other languages. I actually was just thinking of that the other day..
But the other Filipino dialects, I will always suck at. Like my parents’ dialect, Bicolano. I swear, I get laughed at when I try to talk. It’s embarassing, haha. So when I go down to my grandparents place, you can totally tell I’m not from there. Not that I ever even lived there.
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June 4th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
… and I noticed that I kept on pressing s instead of d. So it’d always turn out at she’s and not she’d and I think I sound… mentally deficient. So ima just clear that up HAHA.
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