ok guys, lets have some fun here- let's define ourselves!

You Know you are a TCK when...

- it takes at least 15minutes answering the question "Where are You From"
-You know more about certain cultures than people who belong to the culture themselves!
- You can speak more than 2 languages

-People leave you with a Confused/Bewildered Look after having a conversation with you

you don't know what home is until you've left it behind.
When you have a favorite seat on the plane

-When you can complain about the state of "ethnic" food on your campus or in places like Chinatown.
-When you practically jump someone when you find out they're also a TCK.
-When you have a favourite seat in your airports.
-You switch between words like "jumper" and "sweater" or "airplane" and "aeroplane", depending on location and company.
-You swear in a foreign language routinely, until you realise you're doing it in the class that's supposed to teach you it...(That happened to me in Chinese, I said "Ta ma de" about a test, and my teacher just glared at me).
-You swear in a myriad of languages.
-If you're not paying attention, you'll talk in one of them to someone who only speaks English (I do it when I'm extremely tired).
-Sleep is for the weak. Or layovers.
-Itchy feet has nothing to do with the health of your feet.
-You have to get NetFlix to see some of your favourite movies.

- When you've memorized the airplane safety precautions by heart
- When you find both your airplane tickets and phone bills (long distance) comparable to your tuition...

When you have made so many friends and lost so many friends moving from country to country...

When you honestly can't remember all the countries you've been to.

When you have multiple vaccination cards because they keep getting filled up... but you still have to carry them all with you...

You've filled out so many customs/immigration papers, you don't even need to know the language to know what they're asking....

...you don't know anything about the history or geography of your country of birth but know pretty much everything about any other place in the world

When people say you have an accent but never know what country it belongs to!

Oh God! When the air hostess recognizes you! (Happened to me- don't ask :S )

- When you unconciously pick up on a conversation being spoken in a dialect you have never heard- Hurray to ADAPTATION!

- When you use a foreign word to describe something because the English Vocab is so limited!

- when you feel like your birth town is less of a home than some other city

- when you can speak with great certainty and authority on the pros and cons of other countries, yet have no idea about your 'own' country

- when you speak in what you've learned to be 'English' (or any other language for that matter) and yet people at 'home' don't understand you

- when you know more about a 'foreign' culture than your 'own'

-You hate blind patriotism in your "home" country, but you'll blindly defend the countries you've lived in previously.

- When things that you once found fascinating and totally out of this world as a child now seem common and everyday like, so to speak (i.e. The Pyramids, the Nile, CAMELS...Egypt in all was sooooo mysterious to me when I learned about it in grade school. Now it's just, well, another place where I've lived :P)

- When you know where certain hand gestures are and are not acceptable (while the hand gesture for 'wait' in Egypt is pretty cultural, it will give you a hard close-to-death beating in some parts of Latin America...no joke)

- You have extra pages in your passport, because there are way too many stamps.
- You feel very, very alone and no one around youi seems to understand why.
- You speak more languages than they've heard of.
- When discussing global issues, you're all sides of an argument by yourself.
- You understand all sorts of accents, having a mix of them yourself.

- When you have more than one type of currency weighing down your wallet...with typically more of the currency that you don't need (you can't really get anywhere in the US with a bunch of Euros and a few loose LE...)

- When everyone but you lives off of AIM or AOL while you have MSN Messenger...and they are shocked that you still don't have one (I have no purpose for one, since most of my friends are from OUTSIDE of the US)

- When your friends who have heard your 'story' roll their eyes and laugh when someone asks, "Where are you from?"

- When your friends try to explain your 'story' for you to Mr. Curious...and get mixed up miserably ("Oh yeah, she's Mexican-", "Peruvian", "-and Filipino-", "um, Chinese", "...ack! I give up!")

- when you stay up until 'odd' hours of the day/night just to chat with people

- when the bulk of your mobile bill consists of international sms's

- when you thin in a language not your 'mother tongue'... even if you don't speak that language very well

- when you plan vacations to different countries just to get things cheaper than they are where you live

When instead of collecting baseball cards you collect barf bags from all the different airlines

...every so often you get a pang for home so strong you almost weep.
...you flew before you could walk
...you've forgotten more languages than most people have ever learnt
...non-TCK's don't get you
...you'd mudwrestle your own grandmother for food from home (e.g. locally cooked Asian dishes)
...you have more frequent flyer miles than you can count
...jet lag is old hat

- you don't know which team to support, so you support n team (n being the number of places you lived in) and mutliply by n your chances that your team win. yay!
- you chose your future job from its level of mobility
- the idea of retiring in one place freaks you out

Ya know you are a TCK when...
- an earthquake, heavy storm, bomb threat, or anything else doesn't freak you out

- ya know that survival without electricity is possible

- ya luv listening to the OK pronouncing some foreign words

- you get confused about the right side driving and left side driving- seriously there should be a standard driver's side!

- you sometimes forget there is a sidewalk, and find yourself strolling on the road...

lol..actually i really hate listening to the OK pronouncing foreign words..aaak i cringe every time ;)

Yeah sometimes it can be annoying- but then after a while, meh- it is funny coz they are making fools out of themselves without knowing it ;)

- You find out that there is such a thing as jaywalking when you get to the US
- Street lights, stop signs, speed limits, and pederstrians...what are those?

-You write you dates "wrong" (day/month/year).
-You spell everything "wrong" (colour vs. color, cheque vs. check).

- When people find what you say funny and think that your vocab/word expressions are hilarious and weird ("I don't fancy that...", "bloody hell")

- You didn't grow up on Saturday cartoons, but on CNN, BBC, and your favorite VHS's; if you did decide to flip through the channels, nothing was in english

- You don't plan your day around TV; you can go without it for weeks and not mind

- Subtitles can be useful and you don't mind them (especially in foreign films; I prefer watching films in the original language as opposed to having it dubbed, bleh!)

- You know for a fact that this DOES happen...http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7373128225578708570&q=subtitles

You know you're a TCK when you go "Well, my parents are originally from Beijing and the rest of my family's been there since the Qing Dynasty, I spent the first 8 years of my life in Australia, then a year in Sweden, and then the next 9 in Hong Kong" and you're shocked that people actually think that's a complicated story. It's just two countries and one ethnicity. Plus a small stint in Sweden.

Also when you have to explain how you learned to speak certain languages, why you can speak some but not read others, and why you still can't speak some even though you lived in the country where they're used.

And when you're shocked that people who have lived their entire lives within the small confines of their own town actually exist.

Oh, and when you think that because you're in the same time zone as your home country, that living 3 hours flight away from your parents is too close to home.

THAT VIDEO IS HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1