Excellent book for Expat families! An AMAZON review

 March 13, 2012

By 

Erin Little - See all my reviews

This review is from: Expat Teens Talk, Peers, Parents and Professionals offer support, advice and solutions in response to Expat Life challenges as shared by Expat Teens (Paperback)

This book is a MUST for expatriate families. The layout makes it so easy to use, you can find the issue at hand in seconds. The chapters cover all facets of the teen expat experience with first hand stories from teens who have lived it. There is also clear and well-balanced advice from parents and professionals. Being a teen is difficult regardless of where you are living, Expat Teens Talk will help teens and parents navigate the teenage years in a foreign country. Personally, I found the entire book to be a huge help as I am in the process of applying to teach overseas. I know that I will use this reference regularly as we get ready to move and find ourselves in a new place.

Expat Teens Talk is out there…and people are talking

Going public with a book is an amazing experience. You realise when you hold the first copy of your work that you are exposing yourself to the big, wide world. You are sharing something that is near and dear to you with others that may love it, or not. The response to ‘Expat Teens Talk’, so far, has been extremely positive. People are expressing admiration about the fact that we finished what we set out to do, they appreciate the enormity of what it means to commit and complete such a task. We are enjoying the current  new chapter that we are working on, learning how to market, promote and support our target audience with our communicative resource, ‘Expat Teens Talk’.

What have we learnt from our own experience?? We have learnt the value and importance of doing what you believe in. We found a gap in the market and we felt we could, with our combined professional knowledge and personal experiences, that we could attempt to fill it. We are now working towards the next ‘chapter’ reaching our target audience to support them in navigating their way through the teenage years with the support, advice and solutions to make it an easier and less lonely route.

The powers of Social Networking

Everybody seems to have a point of view about the internet.  Since releasing ‘Expat Teens Talk’, our point of view about Social Networking has really changed. At first, we felt it was burdensome and did not see the value in investing the time and energy to engage and invest in facebook, twitter and even blogging was an effort……now, having been ‘found’ and ‘connected’ and ‘discovered’ by interesting, motivating, supportive people who understand the powers of networking we find ourselves ‘hooked’. We have been contacted by the most interesting people who want to know more about us and or point of view as a result of what we have shared through the medians of using Social Networking.

Learning more about 'why' it is important and 'how' it all really works is what converted us. We hope more people learn about the value of using 'Expat Teens Talk' as a supportive, communication tool through Social Networking.

Good reference for teens on the move, their parents and professionals,Another Amazon review...thank you!!

 March 11, 2012

By 

Santina Hovanessian - See all my reviews

This review is from: Expat Teens Talk, Peers, Parents and Professionals offer support, advice and solutions in response to Expat Life challenges as shared by Expat Teens (Paperback)

The authors involved expat teens, expat parents and expat professionals to create a valuable resource for all those who experience change in their formative years of life. In my work as an expat lecturer and a psychologist I often come across to the groups described in the book, and can relate to most stories. Although expat teenagers for whom change may be the only constant, gain important experiences, broader vision on world and life, they often need lots of support in the journey. I really liked the use of expat peer stories and advice. These stories will give to expat teens the sense that they are not alone, and the advice coming from people who are in their shoes will be most appreciated. This book is a good source, which will hopefully serve as a reference to many expat teens and their parents as they pass through the challenging process of change.

Families in Global Transition (FIGT)

There is nothing more inspiring and motivating than being together with a group of like minded individuals. FIGT brings together names like Ruth Van Reken (co authour of ‘Third Culture Kids, Growing up Among Worlds’, Tina Quick (author of ‘A Global Nomads Guide to Unversity Transition’), Anne Copeland, Jo Parfitt (Summertime Publishing, author of many books her latest being ‘Sunshine Soup, Nourishing the Global Soul’), and many other names. Anyone who is passionate and working, reasearching, reading about or interested in Expats and their way of life is there. Discussions, workshops, lectures, panel discusions are all presented to an audience who ‘gets it’. The pioneers and ‘newbies’ to Expat life sit around tables sharing stories, adventures, experiences and challenges and really feel like everyone around them understands how and why their life is different than the lives of those who do not move around and experience so much change.

It is a refreshing experience and one that we certainly look forwards to. This year we will formaly present our own work, ‘Expat Teens Talk’ is going to Washington to be introduced and shared at FIGT. 

Have you heard about FIGT???

Families in Global Transition, an annual conference where everyone who is working, studying, researching, or passionate about living, or even learning about Expatriate life comes together. This year the conference will be held in Washington. Learn more, see details below.

Register now for the 2012 FIGT Conference!

Date: March 29-31, 2012

Location: The Westin Alexandria | Alexandria, VA

The 2012 Families in Global Transition Conference will be held for the second year in a row in Washington, DC. The conference provides a forum where members of internationally mobile families, e.g. corporate, military, diplomatic, missionary, gather with those who assist them: human resource personnel, relocation experts, educators and counselors. Together we develop strategies for dealing with challenges of cross-cultural living.

REGISTER HERE!

For over 10 years, Families in Global Transition, Incorporated (FIGT) has been the global leader in cross cultural education and training to support the entire expat family. FIGT offers information-packed conferences and year-round benefits through its Associates Program and expanding educational web site.

As the leader of a global network, FIGT promotes the positive value of the international experience, and empowers the family unit and those who serve it before, during and after international transitions.

FIGT believes in the capacity of the expatriate and repatriate family to transition successfully, and to leverage the international experience for all of its human and global potential.

To learn more about FIGT, or watch a short video with FIGT's founder, Ruth van Reken, click here.

Review of Expat Teens Talk from a 'non' Expat

"I am not an expat teen but I am someone who moved around a lot as a child and a teen and as such I can relate to many of the stories written in this book. The inherent difficulties of being a teenager weave through these stories spoken in the first person by the teenagers themselves. In our global village and with the traditional nuclear family dynamic the exception rather than the norm, the ways to develop and maintain lasting relationships and the sense of having a 'home' are two clear themes that we all, as human beings, struggle with - whether we grow up in one house, one country or move constantly around the world. This book can help inform these struggles whether you are a teenager, a parent, or a professional. The wisdom within the chapters clearly identifies the various points of view so that conversations can begin and creates realistic, actionable pathways for those in trouble and those trying to help them. It is a wonderful resource for all teenagers - particularly expat teens, their parents and the professionals they encounter and fills a deep void in literature in this area."

Initial comments in reference to 'Expat Teens Talk'

These comments were the initial reactions of people exposed to 'Expat Teens Talk'. They were recorded by the authors to share with the general public.

-'It is a very 'reader friendly' resource.
-'Wonderful to pick up a book like this and not feel like I have to read it cover to cover, but just be able to easily read what I feel is relevant and targeted to me.'
-'I love the 'Expat Teens Say....' quotes. I feel like I could have written them all.'
-'The photos are wonderful, it makes the 'communication' aspect of this book so real.'
-'The cover is striking, you notice it, it stands out from the 'masses' of books we are all exposed to. Well done!'
-'This is a book I feel like I want to read immediately, it is very inviting.'
-'Perfectly 'pitched' to teenagers.'
-'Finally, someone got it! Developing a resource targeted to teenagers that is not written in a 'language' teenagers do not speak. Expat Teens Talk 'speaks' in a 'voice' teenagers relate to.'

Send us your initial reactions, we would love to hear what you think about 'Expat Teens Talk.'
Diana and Dr. Lisa

Get your copy.......reviews are welcome, please contact us

‘EXPAT TEENS TALK’ IS NOW AVAILABLE

The much talked about, one-of-a-kind resource for Expat Teens is now available.

You can purchase your copy on Amazon.com,

www.expatbookshop.com,

or directly from the authors by emailing

pittman_smit@yahoo.com

Discounts available for bulk orders

For more information, please visit our blog: www.expatteenstalk.blogspot.com

Isn’t there something more to us than being ‘different’?-GUEST BLOGGER

We thank our guest blogger for this wonderful and insightful submission. 

My international school provided what they deemed essential ‘life skill’ lessons to tell us what it was to be a ‘Third Culture Kid’. My school was right to have given these lessons; there are plenty of people who ‘feel’ what it is to be a TCK much earlier than I did, and I cannot pretend the lessons didn’t help me when my understanding and appreciation of it all changed. Nevertheless, using all sorts of scientific-looking diagrams and philosophical theories, they told us what we were meant to feel as TCKs ourselves. I didn’t ‘feel’ any of it. It all seemed dramatic and cheesy, and I took no notice; maybe it had value in social academic analysis, but it certainly didn’t fit into every day life. I was comfortable and secure in my surroundings and, superficially perhaps, believed I knew who I was.

It was only a couple of months into my Gap Year when I started feeling unsettled, but I couldn’t work out why. I used to tell my parents that I was ‘walking on clouds’ and I didn’t really see a possible way of stopping and stepping down. I had never dealt with these feelings before and it was a shock – suddenly I was no longer the invincible person I felt I had been at school. At that point, I didn’t attribute any of the feelings to being a ‘TCK’ as such, I was just a ball rolling down a hill and growing as I accumulated question upon question about life and who I was. I kept these feelings to my self on the whole, but two friends of mine picked up on a few things I mentioned during a reunion that year. I then learnt that they had been feeling almost exactly the same things. One of them reminded me of the TCK diagrams we were given in school and, this time, I listened - we were all TCKs and we were all feeling the same way. I wasn’t 100% convinced just yet, but my awareness was growing. I mean, yes, everybody has a shock when they leave school, but there did seem to be something quite unique about our thought processes at the time. It helped enormously to know that I was not the only one, which was half the reason I started feeling myself again. It was also learning to deal with a feeling of instability. I saw it as ‘riding the storm’ – there really wasn’t anything unusual about my feelings and I wasn’t ‘crazy’!

When I went to University, however, I wasn’t particularly lucky with accommodation and the initial friendship groups I was thrown into as a result of my random hall number. The people in that accommodation seemed so different, so inexperienced, and so young, but I wasn’t quite sure why. I had different conversational interests and perspectives which were not always appreciated, had no knowledge of ‘local customs’ or which political views to espouse and which to hide. Yes, I had taken a Gap Year, which always sees people grow up quickly, but there were a fair few students there who had also taken a Gap Year and, in my eyes, they seemed just the same as the others. I kept quiet about my life at ‘home’ in Singapore as I realised it was not appropriate and would not be understood. Soon, though, I started working out what it was that was actually different and why I found myself keeping quiet about my life back at ‘home’. If you are a TCK yourself (if reading this, you are likely to be), I need not elaborate further.

I found myself becoming slightly defensive and strangely superior. When I was meeting people, the first thing I would ask them was whether they’d lived abroad. If they hadn’t, I was uninterested – they weren’t worth talking to. How could my multi-cultural upbringing result in quite so many prejudices? It didn’t seem right even at the time but I was not happy and this had somehow become my attitude.

I had trawled the university website for different societies to see where I could meet interesting people. Having been brought up mainly in Singapore and with my parents still living there, I tried to join the Singapore Society. While I felt at ease with them, they could not understand why I was there. I remember going to their Chinese New Year dinner with a couple of other TCKs, and our table was clearly not everybody’s first choice. When all were seated, our table was sadly divided between the TCKs and the Singaporeans, and we were clearly both at fault. Eventually, one of the Singaporeans leaned across and asked me ‘why do you know how to use your chopstick so well?’ I fully understand why this was asked of me, but it did make me feel slightly lost; I wasn’t and would never be considered one of them. There were a number of societies I tried, but I never felt welcomed by any of them in the way that I wanted. I met lots of people, but I did not belong anywhere.

It all changed when I came across the ‘Third Culture Society’ – its very existence had to be a sign! I went along to the socials but soon discovered the society was new and didn’t really have any members. Nonetheless, I kept going along to their socials because I believed in it, probably more so than I had believed in anything.

At the end of the year, the exec nominated me to become the Social Secretary. I was determined that the exec and I could change the society. The bad year at University had meant I’d spent a lot of time meeting new people– I also found that so many of them could actually be classified as Third Culture, even if they didn’t know what the term meant. The first social I organised was a Summer BBQ – combining a lot of emotional blackmail with a lot of talking about how great the society could be, we had an amazing 40 people turn up. I was so surprised. We spent the whole year dedicated to building the society, and I was elected President for the following year. With a new team who were equally determined to make the society an even greater success, we have since introduced a monthly newsletter, a charitable arm to the society, and have socials every fortnight. We also have an incredible 130 members and counting and our first social this year had about 100 people actually turn up.

The Third Culture society changed my life at university – I was suddenly part of something I really believed in – I belonged somewhere. It made such a difference. The whole ‘dramatic and cheesy’ Third Culture Kid concepts I had once deemed irrelevant, were suddenly more relevant to my every day life than anything ever could be. I was different, and other TCKs had the potential to understand me in ways most can’t. My troubling questions about ‘who I am’ and what my identity was could easily be answered in this way.

Nevertheless, having struggled through a turbulent Gap Year and a very difficult first year at university, I also crucially came to believe that ‘being different’ was only the start of it. ‘Being different’ is just a means to understand where your identity lies, because it certainly lies ‘somewhere’, even if that ‘somewhere’ is essentially intangible. While we need it all to understand ourselves, we are just as different as the Chinese are from the Swedes, whatever our characteristics might be. The Third Culture Society offers people the chance to feel ‘rooted’ and stable with people of a similar background. It makes more sense to us because we can’t always be expected to relate to an intangible ‘home’. But, by attaching oneself to the concept of ‘being different’, I feel we lose our potential; we ironically lose what makes us ‘unique’. As TCKs, we have the potential to take what is good from a culture and adopt it, and a culture that you might identify with slightly, but never fully, still adds to your experiences as a TCK. Whether we return to our passport country for university or set up shop somewhere completely different, we need to embrace that country and people as we have done in every other country we might have moved to. There is a danger of feeling better than your ‘local’ neighbours, and there is also a danger of feeling too different and, therefore, isolated.

As a result of this mentality, a lot of my energy has gone into ensuring the Third Culture Society is open to non-TCKs. The Third Culture Society brings people together who are interested in the world, whatever their background. We talk freely and at ease, we adopt so many opinions we don’t know what to do with them, we appreciate every location for what it is, and we certainly don’t hold prejudices. This is what makes us Third Culture Kids and we should embrace our diversity, not just our differences.