My childhood was not what you would consider an ordinary one. The average person moves 11.9 times. I am nineteen years old and I have moved nine times in total. If you want to be more specific, I have moved houses 16 times and switched schools 12 times, starting from kindergarten. My lifestyle is a nomadic one.
I believe in being foreign. We all come from different believes, customs, and rules based on commonplaces. Under all those cultural differences we can all differentiate what’s good or wrong. We experience happiness, sadness and angriness. Being foreign means being culturally different and after all isn’t being different celebrated? I believe being foreign is having eyes that saw two different worlds and a soul that was able to mix them. It means acceptance and hope to be accepted. We are all humans and nationality should not be a barrier, it should not divide us; on the contrary, it should unite us. As Sir Francis Bacon said, we are all citizens of the world.
One’s curiosity could lead one to amazing experiences. By tasting other country’s dishes, you can almost feel you are in such country; by learning their language, you open yourself more doors in the world; by learning their art, music and dances you can enjoy yourself and make memories. We shouldn’t be afraid of different cultures since it does not mean the extinction of one’s culture; it means expanding someone else’s knowledge of the world and them expanding yours, learning together as a community.
“An immigrant never feels at home” my dad said once trying to convince me that it was going to get better in the country we were in, since I was having a hard time. That statement obviously did not help, I just wanted to go back to Spain. A few years later I realized that I disagree completely with him. We may never feel at home again in a specific country, but I made my own home and it goes wherever my family goes, it isn’t a place but three people instead. My father, mother and brother are my home.
A study in Japan examining kids who spent a part of their developmental years outside of their parent’s country showed how such kids were more open to new experiences; they also felt a stronger sense of purpose and self-acceptance. Moving so many times taught me a lot, my life became an adventure the second I left my country. I became more open to new people, dishes, subjects, amongst other things. I made unforgettable memories that I would’ve never been able to make in my country, for example, for school trips in Costa Rica we went to caves, volcanoes, and zip-lining. These are adventures worth telling.
As everything in life there are disadvantages. For me the advantages outcast the disadvantages. If I had the chance to change my childhood, I would never change anything about it. I may feel nostalgic sometimes since I do miss Spain and I want to go back and sometimes I may feel like I don’t belong simply because I have an accent, but what I can tell you is that it feels amazing when someone expresses interest on my country whenever I tell them where I am from. I also feel proud somehow of being from Spain when I am surrounded by people that are from other countries.
Having friends all over the world is an advantage, even though I miss them I still visit, and I know that I will always have a place to go, just like they do too. By expanding my social circle I’m expanding my knowledge, since I feel that our believes come from where we are from and our surroundings.
Being foreign shows you how to respect someone else’s opinions and believes. Now I am able to see the world at a more global level and as a result I am able to use different perspectives when addressing certain subjects. As Isabel Allende puts it, we should never assume that people expect the same from the world as you do. I feel as, the longer I am outside of my country, the more I learn and the more interesting my life becomes overall.