1. You know you’re
a TCK when:

2. You can swear convincingly in 5
different languages.

3. To everyone’s confusion, your accent can change
depending on to whom you are speaking.

4. And you often slip foreign slang into your English
by mistake, which makes you unintelligible to
most people.

5. You’re really good at calculating time
differences, because you have to do it every
time you call your parents or watch a match.

6. You start getting birthday wishes several hours
before your birthday, from your friends
further east than you.

7. Your passport looks like it’s been
through hell and back.

8. You have a love-hate relationship with the
question “Where are you from?”
You have both a short and long answer ready,
and you pick one depending on who’s asking.

9. You get nervous whenever a form needs you to
enter a “permanent address.”

10. You know that McDonald’s and KFC taste
drastically different from country to country.

11. You’ve spent an absurd and probably unhealthy
amount of time on airplanes.

12. Your list of friends’ nationalities reads like an Olympic
event competitors’ list.
• UK
• USA
• Bahrain
• Australia
• Pakistan
• Ireland
• India
• Palestine
• Germany
• Peru
• Sudan
• S Africa
• Iran
• UAE
• Russia
• Sweden
• Ukraine
• N Zealand
• Kenya
• Nigeria
• Thailand
• Indonesa
• Lebanon

13. You’ve had the most rigorous sensitivity training
of all: real life.
Eg You always take your shoes off in a Thai
household, but never show the soles of your
feet to an Arab.

14. You’re a food snob because you’ve sampled the
best and most authentic of
every possible cuisine.

15. You convert any price to two different currencies
before making significant purchases.

16. You often find yourself singing along to songs in
languages you don’t speak or understand.

17. The end of the school year was always
bittersweet because so many
people moved away.

18. But the constant flow of new friends more
than made up for it.