My Experience:

PART 1: Budapest, Hungary

My TCK experience began in 1993 when my dad (an agriculture production manager) was offered a job in Budapest,Hungary. I was in first grade at the time and happily attending school in small town Iowa.

In April my mom, dad, seven-year old sister, Lindsey, and I packed up the few things we could ship to Hungary, put the rest in storage for an undisclosed time and boarded our flight to Budapest.

Just-post-soviet Hungary was like nothing I had seen before. There were homeless people sleeping on our street corner, milk was unpasteurized and had to be bought daily in a bag. However, as kids tend to, I quickly adjusted to my new life.

Each morning I took the local tram, clad in my new school uniform, to Magyar British International School. Sometimes in the winter the tram wouldn't come and we would make the mile long trek through the woods, attempting to avoid the crazy homeless man and his dogs who lived in the shack constructed of old car parts.

In no time at all Lindsey and I developed British accents, and I even started playing the very British sports of Rounders and Cricket. Three years into our stay in Hungary my dad was propositioned with a job opening production plants in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. As much as I dreaded moving again, I knew my dad would take the job. He had grown up in Thailand and had always wanted to move back.

Part 2: Chiang Mai, Thailand

I started the fourth grade at Chiang Mai International School in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Thailand was totally different from Hungary. In Hungary I could almost blend in until I opened my mouth, but in Thailand the fact that I was a foreigner was evident to everyone, all the time.

People would come up to me and Lindsey in the streets and pinch our cheeks to see if we were real, people wanted to pose for pictures with us, just because we were white. We couldn't leave the house without being greeted with shouts of "farang" (foreigner in Thai).

All of this soon stopped bothering me, and I found my niche, befriending missionary kids and military brats, I developed a close group of friends. We lived in Chiang Mai until the end of my sixth grade year. By then my mom had had enough and moved our family back to Iowa.

Part 3: Urbandale, Iowa

Coming home was perhaps the hardest adjustment yet. For the first time in years I looked like I should fit in, but I was entirely unfamiliar with the youth culture I so desperately wanted to be a part of.

I spent my first year back in the states just trying to get over culture shock. Eventually I got to a point where I could deal with living in Urbandale, but that complete adjustment never happened. After all I had been through, finding people to relate to in suburban Iowa was impossible.

Part 4: Today

I am graduating from the University of Iowa at the end of next semester with a double major in anthropology and journalism. After graduation I am hoping to join the Peace Corps and return to Eastern Europe as an environmental education volunteer before going on to graduate school in sociocultural anthropology. I have longed to live overseas again since returning to the states and with any luck my future as an anthropologist will hold plenty of traveling!