The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 85 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT ll over the world, every week, there are impromptu international school reunions. Just last month, I had din- ner with former students from my school, and this made me think back to my international high school. I sent out a request for stories on a cou- ple of listservs and talked on the phone with other Foreign Service brats and other internationally raised people. I got responses from more than a score of people and had lively e-mail conversations and phone conversations with most of them. The reunions seem to fall into several distinct categories: official reunions, alumni clubs and activities, major events (weddings, birthdays and funerals) and casual get-togeth- ers. A recent article on adult Third Culture Kids reports that they maintain regular contact with people from other countries. (A TCK is a child who has his or her parents’ cul- ture, the one that they are living in, and his or her own, “third” culture created out of this cultural mélange. TCKs can be military brats, missionary kids, Foreign Service and corporate kids, and others who have lived as children in for- eign cultures.) “Whether in professional or volunteer roles, through friendship or family networks, the vast majority (92 per- cent) have at least yearly contact with people from other countries. Nearly a quarter associate with internationals at least once a month, some daily,” state Ann Baker Cottrell and Ruth Hill Useem. “A majority also report some, though often infrequent, contact with people they knew as children abroad. Increasingly popular are school reunions which validate the third culture and TCK identity and maintain contacts.” Searching the World Wide Web Even if you have lost contact with your old school and classmates, it is possible to find them. David Hocking, a former pupil at Lakenheath High School (a U.S. Department of Defense school), set up a Web site, www.libertynet.co.uk/LHS, fo r his high school. On the site, he included a “brat links” page with useful links. He explains his reason for starting the site: “What you see here is the culmination of an idea. After I left Lakenheath in 1986, I lost touch with a lot of people. With the foolishness of youth, I allowed some good friendships to lapse. In the years since nostalgia set in, I looked back at my years at Lakenheath as some of the best in my life thus far. Then there was this little problem... It suddenly became extremely difficult to find people. People moved, got mar- ried or, even worse, got unlisted phone numbers!” Hocking’s brat links include the All England American High School Virtual Reunion , which is a weekly chat room; the Department of Defense Dependents Schools home page, For the Brats (www.geocities.com/SoHo/7315/); Global Nomads (www.worldweave.com/GN.html); M ilitary Brats International (http://www.militarybrat.com); a nd Operation Footlocker , which leads you to the TCK World Web site (www.tckworld.com). The AFCENT/AFNORTH International High School alumni site, a NATO school located in Brunssum, the Netherlands, has a creative approach to dividing the class- es. It segments the students as Flower Children (the 1960s); Village People (the 1970s); New Wavers (the 1980s); Generation X (the 1990s) and Millennials (the 2000s). They then give names, years of attendance and e- mail addresses (including a “bad e-mail” list, where people can check to see if they are still listed under an old e-mail address). They also note the year of graduation, usually meaning from the American 12th grade — though some respondents consider their 13th year their graduation year. As I trawled the Internet, I found many specialized Web sites for finding and organizing school reunions (see p. 88). Many of these sites include international schools. I also dis- covered that most international schools have Web sites of Continued on page 89 L OST AND F OUND : I NTERNATIONAL S CHOOL R EUNIONS A TTENDING AN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL CAN PROVIDE NOT ONLY FOND MEMORIES BUT A COURSE FOR THE FUTURE . B Y M IKKELA T HOMPSON Mikkela Thompson is the Journal ’s Business Manager and a former FS child. A