This is an old post that I found in my “drafts” folder. It dates from way back in 2009, when I first joined Facebook. I wrote it in India, but never posted it. It is cute and still timely, and I figured that it deserves to see the light of day! So here goes:
My students are all into Facebook, and so they convinced me to sign up for it. While I don’t really spend all that much time exploring it (there are plenty of other time-wasters on the internet, thank you very much), it has been kind of fun to run into old acquaintances in the virtual world.
One of the other things a person can do on Facebook is join any number of different groups, and one of the first that I saw was called “You know you went to an international school when…” There follows a list of more than 80 ‘indicators’ of someone with an international school background – some of which I agreed with, and some of which I didn’t.
In any case, here is my personal list of those criteria that best fit my experiences:
You know you went to an international school when:
- It is hard to answer the question “Where are you from?”
- Your life story uses the phrase “Then we went to…” five (or six, or seven) times…
- Your school memories include those days that classes were canceled due to tear gas, riots, demonstrations, or bomb threats.
- Police guarded your school…carrying machine guns
- School trips meant going to a different country
- You could walk into a bar and order a drink without being questioned
- You got excited when someone sent a video tape of regular TV with commercials.. in ENGLISH!
- You never had a job until you reached college
- Class reunions are not at your school – not even on the same continent!
- You run into someone you know at every airport
- You don’t think its strange that you haven’t talked to a friend in a couple years, but you know you will always have a unique bond
- You have a time zone map next to your telephone
- You know the geography of the rest of the world better than that of your own country
- You speak in many broken languages when you are drunk
- You go home for vacation.
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