Hi there!
Today I want to share this video with you from Ilhan and Elina. As stated in the video, the key word is “vulnerability.”
Ilhan asks Elina to talk about the struggles and benefits of being a TCK.
Elina was born to Dutch parents, and has lived in the Dominican Republic, Qatar, Houston, Texas (USA), England, Saudi Arabia, and The Netherlands. This video covers a lot of different scenarios and experiences from her life, but she especially focuses on her teenage and young adult years.
As a child, saying goodbye to friends wasn’t that difficult because she enjoyed the adventure of meeting new people and seeing a new place. She says the school was the most influential place to interact with culture. She goes on to explain that expat life is very protective, and that fact made living on her own at 18 a great challenge.
Despite many challenges in her young adulthood, she’s learned to let go of the problems that bother her and accept cultural differences as they come. Elina mentions a quote, “The building of walls is ignorance. It’s the strategy of the loser.” For her it means, rather than build walls around yourself when you don’t understand something or someone, try to embrace it instead and see what you can learn from them.
I want to say that Ilhan really helped to facilitate the discussion because of his enthusiasm with the topic. This video is a little difficult to hear at times because of the various background noises. There is also some profanity used once near the end of the video. Still, I encourage you to watch it!
TCK Tunnel 