How to Support Your Third Culture Kids in Local Schools?

School finally started this week in Turkey, so my home schooled kids can no longer feel sorry for themselves because they have to go to bed at a decent hour and get up to study from 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. while their Turkish friends play in the park all day and night. Every year we start a few weeks earlier than the local schools do, so it’s a relief when school starts, and my kids’ friends have to study just like they do.

One of the biggest challenges of overseas life is education for the children.

Five Ways to Deal with Culture Shock

When I first moved to the Middle East in my 20’s, I had a blissful honey moon stage. People seemed so hospitable, and I was enthralled by everything Turkish. Even riding a dolmuş, a blue and white mini-bus with blaring Turkish pop music and evil eye charms swinging from the rearview mirror, made me smile. But at 6 months I hit a wall and had my first bona fide cross-cultural crisis. I cried for two days and felt like I hated everything about Turkey. I was desperate to catch the first plane home, but sheer grit made me stick it out.

Your first year overseas, moving back and forth between enchantment and frustration with your new country is normal. Here are five ways to deal with culture shock.

How to Survive Your First Year Overseas

3 friends with 3 months, 12 years, and
 3 years experience in the Middle East.

When you first move overseas, every day poses a mystery waiting to be solved: how to get a phone line, how to communicate to the electrician that the lines he installed last week are loose, how to buy furniture and appliances using a bargaining system you don’t really understand.  Even going to the corner grocery for bread is a stressful event.  Then you start language study and things really get interesting!

Your first year overseas is a crash course in cross-cultural adaptation.

Another Blooper to Write Home About

As the door opened and our elegantly dressed hostess invited us inside, my husband and I walked into a room of 25 women with Islamic veils tossed over their shoulders.  Suddenly the room fell silent, and all eyes were fixed on my husband, the only male in the room. Our hostess continued smiling and politely ushered Jose into a side room. My face flushed, and I prayed desperately, “Oh God, couldn’t I just disappear right now?”  

Here was another blooper to write home about.

What's Your Greatest Challenge?

Do you ever feel like daily problems and life issues are magnified because you’re working overseas? Today I hope to hear from you about your life.  What is your greatest difficulty living and serving overseas?  If you’re like me, you find that regular, daily struggles are intensified by cross-cultural stress, but living overseas also brings a whole new set of challenges.

My Greatest challenge is trusting God with my children.

Finding Freedom in Simple Routines

My hall closet has a life of its own.  Every August I de-clutter and organize it, but over the course of the school year, from September to May, it slowly deteriorates into a chaos.  Extra items I can’t find a place for get shoved in there, papers and supplies get shuffled, and entropy seems to reign. One of the realities of life in Turkey is little storage space, so my house has one small closet to store empty suitcases, school books and supplies, craft materials, shopping bags, a Christmas tree, ladder, and a broom! 

Just like my closet, my life as a cross-cultural worker also tends towards entropy. 

Enjoying Summer's Bounty: Turkish Style Vegetables!

Are you set to enjoy the last weeks of summer? Or are you tired of the heat and wishing for fall already?  In Turkey, summer’s all about vegetables: eggplant, tomatoes, squash, and green beans.  On hot afternoons delicious smells of frying peppers travel up and down the stairs of our apartment building as housewives make dinner. Kızartma, fried vegetables, is a popular dish served with garlic yogurt. Vegetables of all varieties are cooked in olive oil, tomato, and garlic.

“Olive oil won’t make you fat,” my Turkish mother used to tell me.  

Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World

One whole month of summer vacation sounds exciting, but then when I think of all my projects, I start to get anxious.  How to best use my time? I’m hoping to recharge my spiritual batteries and spend time reading, reflecting, and praying about my plans for the fall. How am I going to balance that with my house organization projects, preparation for next year’s home school, editing my husband’s doctoral dissertation and on-going ministry?  Can you relate?