Ultimately Home
I was already a student at the French international school long before the appearances of these cool Vietnamese kids from abroad. And Mai was one of these Vietnamese newcomers of that year. They fascinated me, these Vietnamese-looking kids who, like my French friends in Vietnam, only came and stayed for a few years before packing their bags again to start a new adventure with their family someplace else.
With time, I understood that these semi-Vietnamese children were the “embassy kids” because they grew up in different Vietnamese embassies around the world. Their parents were Vietnamese diplomats, which explained why they’ve travelled so much and were so worldly from a very young age. Yet, they were still strongly connected to the Vietnamese culture because they were raised in the Vietnamese embassies, which were technically Vietnamese soil but abroad. And as a consequence — or was it a side effect?— to this type of upbringing, these kids were, from a young age, professional expats.
Sadly, sometimes, even expats in their own home country.
During our interview, Mai affirmed that it wasn’t always easy when she was growing up. It felt as if there was an additional layer of difficulty when she was a child and later when she was a teenager. As Mai navigated through the different worlds offered in local and international schools of various countries, she observed, with hindsight, that her lifestyle was more fitting in the international school environment, rather than a local one. With time — a lot of time—, it became apparent that she didn’t have the lifestyle that the majority of the children in the world were having: a more stable and rooted one.
Before attending the French international school in Hanoi at the age of nine, Mai was living her ordinary life as an embassy-kid in Geneva, Switzerland. And like all of the neighboring kids, she attended the Swiss local kindergarten and later primary school. When she entered CE2 — more commonly known as “third grade”— Mai moved to Hanoi and became my classmate-turned-friend for four years.
The realization that her life was a bit weirder than that of the average kid only emerged in her mind when she returned to Switzerland the second time to resume her life as an embassy-kid.
Upon her coming back to Geneva, Mai immediately noticed something that was out of her ordinary. Out of her normalcy. The same kids who were in her kindergarten were still there. Exactly how Mai had left them, except that they, too, grew taller.
And not only were these kids still there, they were also still friends with each other. Exactly like how she remembered them.
This simple realization highlighted the stability that baby Mai never had. Inevitably, this thought made her feel like she was the odd one out, not only because she was the newest member of the class (maybe even the only new member of that class), but also because she couldn’t relate to any of her peers.
She couldn’t relate to them because she was too different from them.
Mai had no idea what it felt like to be them.
She didn’t know what it felt like to live in a place for more than four years, which at that age seemed like forever anyways. She didn’t know what it felt like to attend the same school system throughout her whole academic life because she had just been vacillating between a Swiss system and a French one over the years. And most importantly, she didn’t know what it felt like to benefit from the comfort of being surrounded by the same people since her early ages because, naturally, due to Mai’s frequent relocations, her friendships were mostly characterized by distance and the struggle of maintaining contact.
And sometimes, the most important distance that separated her from her friends was time itself.
She confessed to resent her lifestyle on more than one occasion. She still remembers how difficult and challenging every relocation was for her. How much she dreaded that first day of class in a new school.
She recounted her first memory of being in her Swiss kindergarten and not being able to communicate with anyone because she didn’t speak French. What added to her frustration was her inability to understand what was going on around her in class. I wonder whether that abrupt change of language, along with the major change in environment, had made Mai, throughout her younger years, a very shy and introverted kid.
“Did you have the same feeling when you entered our French school in Hanoi?” I asked her because I had always remembered her as a timid kid throughout our years as classmates.
“A somewhat similar feeling but less salient,” Mai confirmed. “It was similar because I was also entering a very tight-knit community of kids who had known each other for quite some time already,” she added with a little smirk in her voice.
I thought that it was more of a projection of her previous experience because I remember the class “turnover” to be pretty high. After all, it was essentially a school for expat kids and “expat” was synonymous to “temporary”.
But I also remember how tight we all were. How it felt like we were all one family, due to the small class size.
And that mere fact, objectively, could be quite daunting for a newcomer.
Mai explained that, growing up, she often found it very difficult to make friends because of the shy person that she somehow was. She had a lot of things on her mind, a lot of ideas and opinions but somehow she couldn’t express it to the outside world.
“What do you think happened?” I asked her, now more curious than ever, because I realized that the person that I was speaking with was no longer the person that I had in mind, the person that I remember Mai to be.
“London happened,” Mai answered enigmatically, as she carried me on her iPhone and walked across the park to get to the tube station.
Mai had been living in London for the past ten years and had credited this city for a huge part of her “becoming” process. London was a very diverse and international city, which, I imagined, would be a perfect fit for Mai’s multicultural dimension. Ever since arriving to London, Mai didn’t feel like she needed to fit into any cultural norms or standards anymore. As if upon landing in London for university, she instantly understood that she didn’t have to say certain things or act a certain way for people to like her.
London was the first place that allowed her to be herself, truly and fiercely so. London was the first place that fully liked and accepted her. And most importantly, London was the first place that allowed Mai to finally explore all of the different cultures that she had previously come into contact with in order to shape the person that she was today. For the first time, Mai didn’t feel the need to box herself into any one specific persona or culture to feel welcomed in a place.
“I love my experience in London so much, most probably because it wasn’t imposed on me,” Mai shared earnestly. It was, indeed, the first relocation that she did out of choice and not out of obligation.
And this mere fact changed everything.
We continued our interview-turned-hang-out session very casually. We compared the French education system with the Anglosaxon one. We exchanged stories about our respective experiences during our International Relations bachelor years. Mai told me that the people she met in London studying IR were exactly like her: culturally-weird yet incredibly interesting. Their points of view were original and oftentimes conflicting.
I told her that I wasn’t surprised and we both laughed the I-know-what-you-mean kind of laugh.
As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Mai whether she felt like she belonged somehow while being enrolled in the French school in Hanoi. She thought for a split second and told me that she was too young to understand that she could have belonged in a way or another. But it would be a lie if she said that she did feel that way then because she still remembers moments in which she wanted desperately to fit in, moments in which she was ready to change how she was just to make friends easier.
If you knew Mai today, you would know that she wasn’t born to fit in. Nothing about her today — from the way she talks to the way she carries herself— would lead you to think that this girl was once the shyest girl I know.
Yet, Mai today is exactly the person that she was destined to be — successful and enthusiastic in every endeavors that she takes on. I am convinced that the two most important factors contributing to her success are her resilience and her adaptability, both qualities par excellence of a Weird Culture Kid.
Welcome to the tribe. Welcome home.