#boat kid
As a third culture kid, I wasn’t raised in the same country as the rest of my family. Even when I was growing up in America, our nearest family were a 3-hour plane ride away. My grandparents visited every summer, but everyone else was back in England, so I only had stories about them.
I grew up knowing I had a big family, with a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins on both sides; so many that as a…
Weird flex, I know. But it makes sense.
On the boat, there were no other people. I couldn’t just go for a walk to the shops, or meet my friends at a cafe. I didn’t even have friends, because there are a pitiful amount of children on boats. When you do meet other boat kids, it’s tinged with impermanence- you’ll sail away in one direction, they’ll go another.
Wherever you travel, there’s no…
Getting to know other Third Culture Kids, I’ve had a realisation: growing up on a boat makes the TCK experience pretty damn different. The ‘typical’ experience is to move every two or three years from place to place, school to school, and really only feel at home in an airport because you’ve travelled so much.
Yeah, the boat life makes that look downright stable.
Growing up, My family moved every…