The Foreign Service Journal, June 2009

See the New, Improved FSJ Online All 2009 issues of the Foreign Service Journal are now online in a new, more reader-friendly and easily searchable format. In taking this step to raise AFSA’s profile on the Web, the FSJ has teamed with Texterity, Inc., of Boston, Mass., one of the most prominent providers of digital publication services to associations. You will continue to access the magazine online as before, by going to www.afsa.org/fsj or www.fsjournal.org , but you’ll find many more features. You can read the magazine online, download it for offline reading, share articles with friends and much more. A brief guide on the site will introduce you to the new format and explain how it operates. Check it out and let us know what you think by sending an e-mail to journal@afsa.org (also the general address to submit letters for publication, by the way). FSJ readers can now join us on Facebook as well; type “Foreign Service Journal” in the search box. Letter from a Third Culture Kid Dear Mom and Dad, Before you start congratulating me about findingmy first apartment after college, you should probably know: There’s an ant (and occasional mouse) problem. The landlord does not speak English, and the water smells like sulfur when it first comes out of the tap, just as it does in Taiwan. I feel like I’m home. I know I kicked and screamedmy way through five coun- tries, seven cities, four languages and more than 200 plane rides, but it has all been in preparation for this. Now I get to choose my own destination, my own sponsors. Danger pay? Are you kidding? This is going to be a breeze. Wait. A little help here, please? I may have bid on the wrong post. I settled into college in yet another unfamiliar city, chosen more by the gods of wait-list mercy than my stellar applica- tion essay. Stage one of culture shock, excitement, slid quickly into stage two, denial. “They don’t even knowwhere Budapest is,” I would cry. “They’re all fromMassachusetts!” But you helped me through it, with telephone calling cards that I abused, trips home at Christmas and the promise that Boston would soon feel like home. I appreciate your help, I really do. But four years in an American college did not “repatriate” me as I thought it would, and the well-established notion that being a TCK is not so easy to grow out of — well, that’s hitting me pretty hard as well. I wish you had told me that watching my friends ask for simple things to be sent from home — a phone charger, an extra pillow, some old movies — would bring out so much anger in me. My spare blankets are in a fiery hell of FedEx flames, the result of a box gone missing because you had to get rid of moving weight. I wish you had toldme that dragon boat races, swimming tournaments in Bratislava and cow-tongue soup weren’t ex- actly hot topics of conversation among American students. Along with the sense of pride I felt in sharing my stories, there was loneliness, too, when no one responded with their own frightening tales of Kazakh cuisine. But mostly, you should have warned me about after — after all the diplomas were handed out and the caps had been thrown, my choices were going to be slightly different than those of my peers. A triumphant return to my hometown was not possible (which one?), nor was living in a city close to the comfort of relatives (the ones we saw once a year on home leave?). This new post has a lot to live up to, and it has to be done on my own; now that I’m 22, there goes my edu- cational travel allowance. I hope I don’t sound bitter, though you would, too, if you smelled like sulfur after every shower. It’s just that the world was at my fingertips for so many years, and I was naive to think it could continue to exist so easily within my reach. Now you are both 6,500 miles away and I am left wanting to see more, with no idea how to do it on my own. I wish you had told me that picking a college destination was the least of my worries. In this city that I have finally chosen for myself, all I can think about is my next move, and why the one after it may not leave me satisfied either. Love, Your diplomat daughter Erin Kuschner is a recent graduate of Boston College who currently resides in San Francisco. FS VOICE: FAMILY MEMBER MATTERS BY ERIN KUSCHNER 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 9 A F S A N E W S