Home! (And I forgot to blog)

Aaaah! I haven’t updated since late August. Sorry  During this “hiatus” I’ve had internet problems, been traveling, and gotten sick (again!)

Oh…and Ramadan Mubarak to all!


My surprise trip out of the country turned into this twisted “quest” for the meaning of home.

I made some interesting observations on different people’s idea of “home”.

The cliché is that “home is where the heart is” but I’ve always been in conflict with myself as my feelings tell me that my heart isn’t where my home is.


In talking with expats who were living in Dubai for a variety of reasons I came across people who had extremely different ideas of what home is.
On one hand, I met a Muslim British lady who wants nothing more than for her family to return to the U.K. On another, I met an atheist Dutch lady who thinks three days in the Netherlands is more than enough and living in the Middle East is much more fitting for her family.

I also met Iraqi sisters who agreed that if the situation in Baghdad was not as harsh as it is, they wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world (which was kind of a dis because I’d said that I wouldn’t be devastated to live somewhere other than Kuwait). But I guess when you lose a “home” your sense of patriotism overtakes any other definition of home.

After much thought and deliberation (shda3wa!) my conclusions are:
1) Home is where you want it to be.
2) Home is what you define as “Home”.


What struck a real cord with me was one some Syrian-American lady asked me if I was familiar with the “Third Culture Kid” label.


I’m a TCK! Of course, as is normal for me…I read about it all night and decided that what I’d previously called “the Bastard Children of America” were more kindly labeled as Third Culture Kids by sociologists. YAY! People like me are not chemically imbalanced nor are we merely confused chicken nuggets (which is a label that doesn’t apply here)…but we exist the world over and we’re apparently a global phenomenon.

All in all it has been an interesting and revealing trip.

Today’s lesson: When you ramble about personal struggles that are not shared with other people, you’re just blabbing about uninteresting topics and making a fool out of yourself.