I thought I would provide a few proofs that our daughters are slowly becoming third-culture kids.  An obvious one first.  Today I heard Anna begin a few sentences like this: "In England…" and "In Cambodia…"

I’m pretty sure I never uttered the word Cambodia until I was in junior high (if even then!)

A more subtle one I’ve been noticing at times is that I can’t distinguish whether or not Anna’s gibberish is just the standard toddler "silly talk" or actually (perhaps?) just a different language entirely.  I know that her teachers have been talking quite a bit in her orientation classes about what it means to cross cultures.  They may even have taught them some Chinese, Japanese, Hokkien, or Singlish phrases for all I know.   The adult classes in comparison are less entertaining.  We just talk about language instead of actually learning it!  But I’ve been telling people for some time that our girls already have an important job function to fulfill:  translators.

The day I’m not looking forward to is when these sweet little girls eventually will roll their eyes and mumble remarks under their breath about how bad their parents accents sound.  You parents thought teenagers were bad in their own culture!  Just imagine the grief a TCK can inflict.

The nice thing is that now our TCKs are being so flexible with all the change (relatively speaking).  Anna told the Singaporean bus driver matter-of-fact today that we were going in an airplane in two days.  She seemed quite excited about it.  As incomprehensible as it is to me, she really loves to fly in airplanes.  (I on the other hand am wondering the plausibility of reinstating steamboats.) I guess I should count my blessings.

Sarah, the other TCK in the family, seems to have fully transitioned to this culture.  Other than strange sleep-wake patterns, which may be related to sleeping in a hotel rather than a new country, she seems happy wherever she is.  That is; as long as she’s allowed to roam free…which she rarely is.  You can see the dilemma.

Oh well, for these little girls they’ve got it easy in terms of transition.  It’s like our language instructor described, "For the 0-5 year olds it’s language learning…without tears."  Meanwhile, for the rest of us, we have a few years of "weeping and gnashing of teeth" to endure.  But maybe we’ll be functionally bi-lingual at the end of it all.  That’s what we’re praying for anyway.