ITP - 153: The Places We Call Home, Belonging, and Raising TCKs

JP:
Welcome to another episode of the International Teacher Podcast. I am joined by first-time host Hannah.
Hannah:
Woohoo!
Greg:
Yay.
JP:
And I’m also joined by Greg, the single guy in the sand trap.
Greg:
Hi. I’m back.
JP:
Still here. And today, if he suddenly dozes off halfway through, folks, it’s completely normal. He’s on muscle relaxants.
We are joined today by Yolanda Reshemah, who is calling in from California. Hi, Yolanda.
Yolanda:
Hello, everyone. Hello to you all. Greg, everyone, good to see you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s my first time, so I’m excited. I love the energy.
JP:
We’re excited to have you. California, Iowa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia representing.
Yolanda, could you tell us a little bit about your international journey?
Yolanda:
Oh my gosh, where do I start?
First of all, I was born and raised in the Caribbean, specifically St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I grew up there and left at the age of ten, having absorbed my culture, my history, everything about my ancestry, the food, the music, the beaches, the sunshine, and the colour.
At the age of ten, I moved to England. You can imagine what that was like. It was exciting, but it was also lacking in colour and lacking in taste.
My family really loved exploring. We just happened to be people who loved to travel, and my parents wanted us to be able to live abroad while already knowing who we were.
Growing up in England was a huge learning curve, and that’s putting it mildly. I had the second wave of my education there, made new friends, and acclimated to some degree. But it took me about two or three years to really settle in and figure out what I was doing in this place. Having my family around me made it easier.
Then, at around 17, I moved to France as part of my education. That was an absolute blast: being a teenager in Paris, working and studying. I was fully immersed, and I loved it.
I studied in Paris, and it was amazing. I was living, moving, and thinking as a French teenager, as a Parisian young woman. They really became like my family away from my family. That was my first experience of that: being educated in all things French.
Then I came back to England, and that was a big shocker because I was really quite French by then. I hadn’t realized I had acclimated completely. So when I came back and tried to fit in again as an English girl, it didn’t happen for quite a while. It took time for me to readjust to England.
And now here we are in California because I met a man, married him, and we talked about where we should take our life and have an adventure. We decided somewhere sunny because England is gorgeous and beautiful, and I love many things about it, but the weather during the winter can be grey for many months.
So we chased the sun, and here we are in California. We’ve been here about thirteen years now, married with a child who is in the education system here. Last year, incidentally, we took her back to England for one year to give her a taste of life and education there. She loved it and didn’t want to come back.
But here we are now, for the moment. That’s a bit of a whirlwind tour.
JP:
Was your husband from the UK, or was he originally from California?
Yolanda:
Neither. He’s German.
We met in England. In England, we’re so eclectic. It’s very rare to find a group of people sitting outside a pub and everyone is the same. We’re very mixed, from different countries and cultures.
We had this massive group of friends from France, Germany, Africa, India, and all over. We would get together and have these lovely soirees once a month. He was one of them, and that’s where I met him.
Greg:
That just brought you into our fold right there. The way you described your life and then said you married a German completely pulled me in. I think that moment says so much.
Every time we talk to kids in international schools, you ask them where they’re from — and really, don’t ask it that way. You say, “Where are you from?” and they’re like, “Uh…” They don’t really know how to answer. I’m talking elementary kids, but sometimes middle and high school students too. It can be an identity crisis.
You’re going to ask Hannah’s kids where they’re from, and they might say this country, that country, maybe another one later on. Who knows?
Hannah:
Even yesterday, we had a conversation about where we’re from with our kids. My oldest is six, and he said, “We’re going home.” I said, “Yeah, we’re going home, bud.” And he said, “We’re going back to Pakistan?” I said, “No, no, we’re going to our Iowa house.”
He was balancing those two ideas of where home is.
Yolanda:
That’s often a question I ask guests on my podcast show. It’s also a question that comes up with my daughter and my family. My closest blood relatives are in England, and sometimes my closest blood relatives are in the Caribbean.
I refer to all of those places as home, but home for different reasons.
Right now, here in the U.S., it’s home because it’s where the people who are in my heart live. It’s where we reside. It’s where we’ve built a house together. It’s also where I have a community of friends and work colleagues who hold me accountable and look out for me. If they don’t see me for too long, they’ll call and ask, “Where are you? Are you sick? Is something going on? Why haven’t we seen you?”
That makes it home. It’s where I have friends who see me, value me, understand my humanity, and also support the things I’m trying to build.
When I’m on the phone with my mum in England, I’ll say, “How are things at home?” because that’s where my mum and sisters are.
Then together we’ll talk about whether we’re going home for a long summer, meaning the Caribbean, because that’s where our ancestors are buried. It’s where we learned who we are and understood the standards around our family, our wider community, and our culture.
When we go back there, people hold us accountable and say, “So what have you been doing abroad, all of you? What are you building? What are you creating? How are you making us proud back here?”
All of those places are home, but for different reasons. I don’t feel like you need to choose one over the other. At the moment, I don’t.
Hannah:
I completely agree.
I have a similar story. I was born in Minnesota, and when I was 12, my parents moved us to Brazil. I stayed there until university, then did my college years in Iowa. My mom always refers to Minnesota as home because that’s where my parents are from.
I’m like, “Mom, I have no recollection of Minnesota. I was so little when we moved away.” She says, “But you’re from Minnesota.” And I say, “No, I’m not.” Then she asks, “So where are you from?” And I’m like, “At what point in my life? When we moved to Iowa? When we moved to Brazil? Where I went to university? Where I live now?”
Home is such a fluid concept. Even my kids don’t have the same home as me. I’m not raising them in Brazil. My oldest was born in Kuwait. My youngest was born in Texas. We lived in Kuwait for a few years, and now we’re in Pakistan. So I love that. We have a very similar story. It connects us, and I feel like it connects the world.
Yolanda:
That’s right. It brings such a rich experience, especially to the young ones.
For my daughter, being in England and being able to look around and see people who look a little bit like her was fascinating, because she’s mixed race. She saw how different everything was, tasted different things, and heard music from so many different parts of the world.
Then there’s the discussion around home, which for me exists in many different locations. But where do you belong? That question is a different level altogether.
Where do you belong, Greg? Hannah, where do you and your kids belong?
Greg:
That’s a great point, and my answer is probably similar. The more you travel, the more you start saying, “Here’s my suitcase. Where I hang my hat, I’ve made a home.”
I’ve made a home here. I’ve made a home there. My family is over here. I like the way you put that.
People from more homogenous communities, who maybe haven’t left their home country, might be confused by this conversation. But people listening who are interested in international teaching — or already out there doing it — will connect with this. Once you’ve lived in two, three, or four different countries, the answer to “Where are you from?” or “Where do you call home?” changes.
I have a quick story from the eyes of a six-year-old. This happened two days ago. We had Eid break for the Muslim holiday, so the kids were gone for a week. I was sitting at a computer next to a little six-year-old girl in first grade or kindergarten. I asked, “Where did you go for your break? Did you travel? Did you go to your home country?”
She said, “I went to half of my home countries.”
I thought, “This is going to be a great conversation.”
I asked, “Where did you go?” She said, “We flew to Ontario.” I asked, “Where else did you go?” She said, “We just went there and came back. I didn’t go to Pakistan.”
So she has two home countries, and in her six-year-old mind she had gone to half of them. That warmed me up. I was waiting for four or five or six countries. But no — just half of her home countries.
JP:
“Where do you belong?” is such a great way of phrasing it because it opens the door to multiple answers. You don’t need to say just one thing.
If someone asks, “Where do you come from?” it feels like you’re supposed to come from one place. But when you ask, “Where do you belong?” I immediately think, “I belong in Istanbul. I belong in Canada. I belong in Mexico.” I belong in a number of places I would call home.
Yolanda:
I feel the same. To some degree, I belong here in the U.S., in this particular patch of California, because it’s where my daughter, husband, and closest friends are.
I belong in the Caribbean because it’s where I was formed and shaped, where my initial identity was formed. I belong in England because it’s where I grew up. I also belong in France because I spent so much time there and still have a lot of that in my blood.
We also spend a lot of time in Italy, and when I go there I think, “Yes, this feels like home too.” My husband says, “No, not another one. We don’t need another home.”
JP:
It’s only problematic if you have literal homes in all these places. Then it becomes, “Which house are we going to?” But if you’re visiting people and belonging to communities, that’s different.
Yolanda:
Exactly. And then there’s Germany for him, because his parents are there. He’s food-anchored in all these places.
But it’s not a problem. It’s delightful. It’s a privilege and an honor to be able to authentically experience these different cultures, languages, and ways of living. It makes life so rich and tasty in every possible sense.
Greg:
Let me ask you about something else. My ears ring when I hear the word podcast. You mentioned you have a podcast, and we haven’t talked about it yet. Could you name it and tell us what you do with it?
Yolanda:
Thank you so much, Greg. I appreciate it.
Yes, I have a podcast called The Places We Call Home. The website is theplaceswecallhome.com. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
The podcast is about conversations and tools for people — women specifically, though I do have men as well — who have moved from countries around the world and currently live here in the U.S., because that’s where I am right now.
It’s about what that’s like and the challenges people have to overcome. I’m not talking about documentation, because there are so many immigration lawyers who do that work. I’m talking about the psychological impact of relocating.
As women, we often carry so much of the emotional weight, especially when kids are involved. So how are you dealing with homesickness? How do you differentiate between homesickness and culture shock? What about loneliness?
Often loneliness creeps in because many of us haven’t factored in the work required to find friends. I assumed it would be like life in England: I would just show up, organically meet people, hit it off, and find friends. It doesn’t work like that. I’ve learned that you have to be intentional about what you need in your friendship group. You have to build your community.
How do you thrive? What does thriving look like?
What about muted voices? Many of the guests I speak to come to the U.S. speaking Portuguese, French, or other languages. English may be a second or third language. When you speak with an accent and local people don’t always understand you, there can be a muting, a shame, and a shyness. How do you deal with that?
There are so many psychological impacts we don’t prepare for. The podcast shares stories of people who have gone through those emotions and come out the other side. It shares wisdom, tools, and strategies to help people shift their thinking and try something new so they can build the life they moved for in the first place.
I’m also planning workshops and maybe mentoring, because I’ve moved six times on purpose.
Greg:
If you’re hosting this podcast, you clearly said to yourself, “I have something to give back.” There are people out there who are going to go through what you’ve gone through multiple times, and you’re giving back now.
I want to listen to it to hear that point of view and how I relate to it, but also to understand how people are feeling in my country. I don’t know much about California, but it sounds like a wonderful platform for discussion.
How long has your podcast been going?
Yolanda:
I’ve stopped and started because I was very resistant at first. I’d say about two years, coming up to around seventy episodes. I stopped for all of 2024 because I had a death in the family, but now I’m getting back into it.
I’m setting up group discussions and preparing guides, workshops, and tools to help people get together and support their mental health. Because it can lead to depression if you’re sitting in your room waiting for people to see you, find you, call you, and notice that you exist — and by month six, it hasn’t happened. You start questioning, “Did I make the right decision?” You may not be able to go home, or maybe you don’t have a home to go back to.
Greg:
And you may not have a specialist to talk to. You can’t just dial up a psychiatrist or psychologist you trust. What you’re doing is a vital way to share feelings and tackle those issues.
I had not heard of your podcast, so I’m very happy you came onto our show and introduced it. It sounds like it could go on forever if you allow it to, because people will keep saying, “I want to be on your show. I have things to talk about.” And listeners will say, “I relate to that.”
Yolanda:
Absolutely. I just heard from a woman who connected with me because she wants to be on the show. She moved states, and she connects with everything we’re talking about as women who have relocated from abroad. She’s trying to figure out how to help her kids acclimate and bond.
One of my guests, Karen Giver, moved from Israel about four and a half years ago. Her husband had been going back and forth for years, and she finally moved with the kids. She had a settled life in Israel, and now she’s in California. It’s been really difficult. You can still hear the pain and sorrow four years later.
Karen is a professional home remodeler — exactly the sort of person I need for my house — but she is still going through a hard time. Her kids didn’t speak English when they arrived, so they were learning. One of them was fighting and lashing out because he couldn’t express what he was feeling. She was managing her own fears as well as the children’s.
She was asking, “How am I going to settle in? What are these people saying? Why do I have to ask people whether it’s okay to have a playdate in two weeks? Why not just have a playdate now?”
So it’s getting over those cultural humps. For her, it has been really painful, but she’s doing it. She’s also starting a new business.
JP:
Sometimes you can find that community online. This is my international community here. You have your international community calling in, dialing in, and participating in your podcast.
It can be comforting to share stories online versus in person, especially if you don’t have the option to find an international community where you are.
Yolanda:
That’s very true. Hannah, I think you were about to say something.
Hannah:
I was just going to say that I love this idea, and I love that you’re building that community online.
I think back to my own story. In the middle of COVID, I gave birth in February 2020, right at the beginning of it all. We were living in Kuwait at the time, then we left and went back to the U.S. after the great COVID baby escape story that I’ve shared before on the podcast.
We tried to repatriate for a couple of years, and it didn’t go so well. We didn’t find a good community. We didn’t feel like we had those ties. We tried online and in person, and it just wasn’t working.
Adding COVID on top of that — the trauma of the whole world going through something big — made it even harder. So I’m glad this is out there now to help people who are going through that.
Greg:
This would be a great opportunity, since we’re talking about reaching out and connecting. Yolanda, you have the podcast, but you also have a website. Could you give that to us?
Yolanda:
Yes. The website is theplaceswecallhome.com — all one word.
You can also find me on Instagram. I believe it’s placeswecallhome.pod. You can find The Places We Call Home podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
JP:
Excellent. I’m excited because I’m running out of ITP episodes. I’ve recently restarted listening, and I’m looking for other podcasts to help me with my dog walks in the morning because they’re getting boring. I’ll definitely look up The Places We Call Home and start with episode one because I like to go through the history.
How long are the episodes? About thirty minutes? An hour?
Yolanda:
About thirty minutes. My very first episode is with a German gentleman who moved here with his family as a teenager and now doesn’t really see himself as German. His life is very interesting. He made it big, became a multimillionaire, and then lost it all. I won’t tell you how. You’ll have to tune in.
You’ll hear my ebb and flow and my learning curve. Doing this podcast was something my friends initially pushed me toward. They said, “Yolanda, you should do a podcast.” I said, “Why should I? Why don’t you?”
My background is law and strategic communication, but putting my voice — or even my face — out there was terrifying. I limped in gradually. Here I am, seventy episodes and about two years later, and I’m still learning.
Greg:
The first thing I think of when I hear your podcast name is one of my favorite books, Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! I’ve always given it as a gift. I can picture writing in it different places people have been or are going to, giving it to them when they leave or when you welcome them.
JP:
Speaking of children’s books, we have a children’s book author in the room today. Greg has officially published his first children’s book. The title is Stay for the Show.
You can find it on Amazon. It’s available as a paperback and ebook, and soon there will be a hardcover version so libraries can run out and buy it.
Greg:
Yolanda, you’ll see the movie of this every single day in an elementary school. It’s about the child who says, “I’m going to walk as slowly as I can to the bathroom because I want to get out of class. Then I’m going to play around in the bathroom. Then I’m going to go to the farthest bathroom away. Maybe I’ll hide in the library.”
They’re missing the show, which is class. It reaches out to every kid who has ever been to elementary school, at least in the American culture, and international schools too.
I want listeners to get a copy not because I’m making any money off it, but because I want kids to read it. It took me 25 years to write it.
And Hannah’s book is on the way too.
Yolanda:
I haven’t written a book, but now I feel like I should. I want to. I need to think about it.
JP:
Hannah has a book coming soon. I’ve read it, and I love it. I want to see the illustrations to see if they match what’s in my head. The title is still to be announced, but the minute it gets published, we’ll be plugging it and spreading it far and wide on this podcast.
Greg:
And Yolanda, it will go well with your podcast idea because it has everything to do with adjusting to the culture you’re a guest in. Hannah’s kids have had to adjust to different countries, and there’s a whole theme connected to ITP, international teaching, and what you’re doing with your podcast.
It’s not just the language or the culture. It’s everything wrapped together, and it hits at different points: when you arrive, six months later, a year later, sometimes at the worst time.
Yolanda:
I can’t wait to read your book, Greg, and Hannah, I’m looking forward to yours too. I feel like we need to connect and do something. Maybe we’ll do a webinar and get parents involved, because this is a big deal.
Acculturating your kid is a real issue.
When my husband and I moved to England for our sabbatical, we were nervous. He was thinking, “What if she doesn’t like it?” I was thinking, “I think she’s going to like it. The problem is, what if she really likes it? What are we going to do?”
We were at different ends of the spectrum. And guess what? She loved it so much she did not want to come back. She made her first best friend in England. She loved afternoon teas, walking everywhere, and the fact that kids walk to and from school in rain, shine, or snow. It was rare for us to drive her.
Coming back here and having to leave all of that behind was excruciatingly painful. It took a lot of talking, arguing, and negotiating to arrive at the decision to come back. Then, once we got here, it was still hard. We had to walk with her through that process and learn new tools to help her reacculturate.
JP:
Tell us a little bit about those tools. What did you use to help her see that this was the right path for now?
Yolanda:
First of all, my husband is German, we live in the U.S., and because of Brexit, he couldn’t work in England easily. They need doctors, but it wasn’t possible for him in a simple way. Otherwise, we might have stayed. It would have taken a few years, and we didn’t want the family to be split up.
So we decided we had to come back here. We told her that maybe when she’s older, she can go back to England for university. She has decided that’s what she wants to do.
Once we were here, we set up phone calls and video calls between her and her friends in England. We arranged that once a week she could have calls, chats, and texts so it didn’t feel like such a drastic break. She’s at a sensitive age.
At school, we made a point of organizing a buddy for her. We got to know the parents. We created a routine for her: taekwondo, swimming, tennis, and activities like that so she could get into the rhythm of having a life here and meeting people.
It wasn’t about breaking away entirely from her friends in England. It was about keeping those relationships as much as possible while making new friends and creating a life here.
What I realized was that I had to help her imagine, “How can I build a life here?” That is difficult for a child because she wants immediate, physical connection: chatting, walking, running around with friends. The idea of building something six months down the line is painful.
There was a lot of talking, hugging, crying, and allowing her to feel the sadness. Allowing her to feel broken and cry however many times a week she needed to cry.
We got her involved in the local libraries and art classes because she loves art. We asked questions like, “What is it about England that you love? What do you miss? What is it about the U.S. that you love and want to keep hold of? What do you want to build here?”
We tried to focus more and more on the things she liked here and reinforce the positive. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, but I knew I needed to help refocus her mind.
The thing that made the biggest difference was taking her to the local animal shelter and volunteering there during the summer and after school, two or three times a week. For a while, her days were really busy. School was intense here, and she hated it. She didn’t get on with the kids because she just wanted her friends from England, and nobody else was good enough in her mind.
The animal shelter changed things because she could hang out with kittens and puppies and meet people who loved animals as much as she did. That was when things started to shift.
The whole process has taken about seven months to get her to a stage where she’s now saying, “Yeah, okay.” She’s still talking back and forth with her friends in England.
We also went back over Christmas and spent two weeks there so she could be with her friends and celebrate her birthday with them. We had to fly back to England. It was a small price. You do whatever you need to do for your kids sometimes. Not everyone can do that, but we were able to.
Hannah:
I do the same thing with my kids. They still keep in contact with some of their friends from Kuwait, even though we’re in Pakistan now.
We come back to Iowa over the summers, and one of the things I said when we went back overseas as a parent of TCKs — and as a TCK reflecting on my own experience — was that we had to have somewhere to go in the summers. A place where the boys can just be.
We have family members who can take us in and let us live with them for two months, but we bought a house in the city my husband is from. His sister lives in it year-round, but this is our space. That way we’re not going from place to place to visit family.
During COVID, when we came back, we essentially had nowhere to go. We ended up in a little one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with a newborn. We wanted a security net, so we bought this home.
Now, every summer, we come back and get the boys involved in art classes and activities at the local library. Before this episode, I was planning our entire summer around different activities to keep them busy.
From that international standpoint, you have to give them the best of both worlds: the best of their world in Pakistan and the best of their world here.
Yolanda:
Yes.
JP:
And for them, Hannah, Iowa will feel like home. If it had been transient and you were visiting everyone else, it might not feel the same. But over time, they’re going to feel like Iowa is home as well as wherever their house is ten months of the year.
Hannah:
Yes. When I went to university as a TCK, we would stay with people when we came home for Christmas or summer. I would use their address for different things if I needed mail or had to sign up for something.
During university, I was filling out a form and an address popped up. It was an address I had lived at very briefly for a couple of months. I thought, “What was that address again? Where did I live then?”
Being able to have one address and say, “That’s the address,” is a big deal. A centralized location matters.
Greg:
I don’t think I answered your question about the place I call home. What Hannah said about needing an address triggered it for me.
Since I’ve been single for so long and overseas for my whole teaching career, I’ve reflected on this a lot. When you live overseas, you have time to think about yourself and your situation. You have a lot of downtime, and sometimes that can become something else. I try to turn it positive and think about these things.
Over the years, I’ve realized that the place I call home has become my little brother’s house and his family, my parents’ home wherever they are, and my best friend’s house and his family. My best friends and their families have become home.
When I want to go somewhere and feel comfortable, it’s not about what I have or don’t have. It’s about getting grounded by seeing my best friends and the family that means so much to me. Their lives, comparatively, don’t change as fast as mine. My life changes at lightning speed sometimes: two years here, two years there, a year here, vacations in many different countries.
Their lives give me that grounded feeling of home. That’s my single-person point of view without having a family traveling with me.
Yolanda:
I really love that, Greg and Hannah. It’s about anchoring.
We can do what we’ve done because we have a place where we can see ourselves reflected. That’s the physical home, but it’s much more than the physical address. Being able to come into our house here in the U.S. and see our clothes, our shoes, and ourselves reflected in the place makes a difference.
Interestingly, one of the things my daughter grieved deeply was the Victorian house we lived in in England. It was quirky, with an apple tree in the backyard. We used to pick up apples after it rained and make apple crumble. Her friend would come over for pajama sleepovers. It’s all the memories associated with the place where you’re anchored that tug deeply at the heart.
When we drive past that house, she says, “There’s the house.” It’s the memories. She wants to come back and stay there because it means reliving those happy memories. That anchoring creates home and belonging because it’s connected to relationships. That’s the most valuable thing we have.
JP:
And that was just one year of her life. It’s incredible how quickly you can get drawn into a place and anchored to people.
Hannah:
As a parent, you read all the parenting books and try to learn how to be a great parent. A lot of people say kids need stability, and they do. But a lot of my friends here say, “I’m never going to move from this house because this is my kid’s home.”
The way I think about it is, yes, we have this home here, and we are blessed as international teachers to be able to do that. But I am my kid’s home. Our family, wherever we are, is also home.
Whether that’s Kuwait, Pakistan, Texas, or Iowa, even if we sold this house, I am their home. I am their constant. Whether we evacuate during COVID, or spend three weeks in Asia because war has broken out during the school year in the Middle East, I am that home for them. Our family unit is their home.
Yolanda:
That’s beautiful.
I often say that to guests when offering tips. When you’re thinking about home and trying to recreate home, it isn’t only about beautiful geographical locations. It’s about being comfortable, being happy, and feeling that you’re in a place or situation where you can thrive.
It’s also about little rituals. Like you said, Hannah, you’re the constant in their lives. That’s what I see with myself, my daughter, and my husband. Wherever we go, we create rituals and constants.
For example, when we’re somewhere in Italy, we find that little gelato place that’s open until midnight. We go at eleven at night and sit there for an hour with the locals, chatting and eating gelato. That’s the only place in the world where we can do that. It becomes part of our rituals in these different locations.
Having that bond and doing things together creates such a strong sense of safety and togetherness. My daughter knows she’s not in it alone. If she’s feeling down, she can talk to us. We do it together.
JP:
This segues nicely because we have a question on ITP. When you move somewhere new, what are three things you need to take with you to make a home a home? We ask that you don’t choose things with heartbeats, because people and pets go without saying.
Yolanda:
When you say no heartbeats, you mean pets, children, anything alive?
JP:
Exactly.
Yolanda:
Well, I love to take certain clothes and footwear because I love to walk. I think, to some degree, that’s the Parisian thing. There are certain outfits I love to take. I want to be able to walk comfortably, and I want to be able to go to a lovely restaurant and feel like I’m part of the setting.
I also love to take my face-care kit: my moisturizers and the things that are part of my ritual. Small bottles, large bottles — I need enough of the stuff I love.
Those are two things.
The third thing is difficult. I don’t know if there is a third physical thing, because I also like to be flexible. I like to see who I’m going to be in a new place. How will it impact me? How will it change me? How will it add something fresh to my life? Will it alter the way I see the world or function in it, even slightly?
At my core, I’m still the same, but I like to leave room open. So maybe the third thing is the mindset I take with me: expectation, wonder, hope, excitement, and looking forward to what the adventure will be like.
Greg:
Our second question is one we always ask. Are you willing to share a G-rated customs or police story? Nothing that will get you in trouble, but something fun involving police, border security, or airport customs.
Yolanda:
Oh my gosh. I might be the one terribly boring person because I don’t think I have anything.
Except, when our daughter was a baby, we traveled back and forth a lot. It was just me, my husband, and my daughter here, while everyone else was across Europe and the rest of the world. So we did a lot of traveling so everyone could see the baby.
One time he forgot his green card on a trip to England. Going out was fine. Coming back, he decided he was going to pull at their heartstrings by strapping the baby to his chest, facing outward, and getting her to charm everyone.
And it worked. They gave him a temporary card or something at customs, and he got back in.
JP:
The baby was the green card.
Greg:
The international baby card is powerful in many situations, whether you’re getting across a border, standing in line, or escaping a country during COVID. That’s a wonderful story.
I know you had to think about it because you’re too good. Stay on the right side of the law. That’s important.
I have a German story, but I’m not going to share it.
JP:
Come on, Greg. I can assure you we have not heard this.
Yolanda:
Now you’re teasing me. I want to hear it.
Greg:
Okay, so I was in Germany. I hadn’t been there to see my family and friends since 1990, and this was 2015. I was a little bit goofy that night, and it was around two o’clock in the morning.
The last time I had been in the subway system in Berlin was when the wall was still up. This time, it was after the wall had come down. What people may not know is that the subway system grew exponentially. It was huge compared to what I remembered.
There are very few bathrooms in the subway system, especially several levels down. It was three in the morning after drinking with friends, and I went off to the side. Not on the tracks, but along the side near the tracks.
When I finished and turned around, there was a short German policewoman and a very tall police officer, both standing there with their arms crossed.
I spoke German fairly well at the time. The woman looked at me, the man looked at me, and she basically gave me the “What are you doing?” look.
I almost got put in jail because I laughed when they said they were going to fine me. It was 15 euros. I had just spent 150 euros on rounds of drinks that night, and they were giving me a 15-euro fine. I gave them the cash.
JP:
A public toilet would have been about two euros, so it wasn’t that much more.
Greg:
Now I’ve made it a public story. Toilet stories are funny. That’s one of my police stories. I have oodles, but it’s not about me.
To make it a nicer ending, it was snowing that night, and I remember singing in German as I walked through the streets where I had lived in 1987 as an exchange student. The streets were completely empty. Snow was falling at three in the morning, and I was walking from the S-Bahn station back to the home where I had spent a year.
It comes full circle with what you were saying, Yolanda, about places you call home. Germany was a place I called home at the time.
Yolanda:
It sounds like you miss it, Greg. Do you miss Germany?
Greg:
I do. I’m fortunate to have two wonderful families.
When I was seventeen, I spent a year with an exchange program in Berlin while it was still behind the wall, in 1986–87. I’m still in contact with that family. I call them my brothers, and I call her mother. The last time I visited was around 2015, so I’m due for another trip.
Germany is home because of what I did that year and how special those people are to me.
JP:
So Yolanda, imagine your daughter talking forty years from now about that one year in the UK in the same way.
Yolanda:
Absolutely. She has made it clear she’ll be going to university in England, and she wants a gap year before university, backpacking like the European kids. Grandma and grandpa in Germany are very happy about that.
They’re in Hamburg. I love Hamburg.
Greg:
Let’s go around and do final thoughts. Yolanda, we’ll start with you. You can plug your show or say what’s on your mind.
Yolanda:
I have had such a good time hanging out with you and talking about our trips around the world and the many things we have in common.
That’s what I love about conversations, sharing, and podcasting. I’m reminded that we have far more in common than not. Our stories and life experiences connect us in unexpected ways. That’s one of the happy things I get from traveling and sharing with other people who travel.
It’s been a blast. I love that you’re looking forward to listening to The Places We Call Home. Please listen, share your stories, and I would love to connect with you all again.
Thank you.
Greg:
Welcome to the family.
Hannah, final thoughts?
Hannah:
Yolanda, I’ve had such a great time talking with you and getting to know you. Thank you so much for being on the show.
It’s nice to talk to someone who is in the United States and is maybe an expat in the U.S., so to speak, and to get that perspective. And also someone who is a parent and understands raising TCKs. Thank you.
JP:
I enjoyed getting to think about where I call home. I now feel bad that I didn’t mention Oman, because Oman was my home for seven years, so I want to shout out Oman as well.
The places we call home — it’s not always about the length of time, as your daughter proves. It’s about the depth with which we integrate, make friends, and make a life for ourselves. It has been a pleasure to meet you and reflect on our own journeys and the places we call home.
Greg:
Ladies and gentlemen, the ITP is getting emotional talking about home and relationships.
Listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Yolanda. We need to all go to her podcast. I already did. I went to her podcast and followed it because it is related to the International Teacher Podcast in many ways. You can hear it just from this conversation.
Yolanda, you’re part of our family here. From the International Teacher Podcast, we’d like to thank you for coming on from The Places We Call Home podcast.
Yolanda:
Thank you for having me on the show. It’s been a pleasure. I loved it.
Greg:
You can find her website at theplaceswecallhome.com. You can also find the podcast wherever you listen. We’ll put it in the show notes.
Thank you to Hannah from Iowa, currently on repat with her family and trying to figure out where home is right now, cutting the grass and all that stuff. JP is back in Mexico, and I’m still here in the desert.
Thank you for listening. This has been the International Teacher Podcast.