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denise
Joined: 23 Apr 2003
Posts: 3419
Location: finally home-ish
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 Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 6:02 am Post subject: |
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| naturegirl321 wrote: |
That would make another interesting topic, those who have married teachers while abroad.
Hope things work out for you enise, if you get married, you'll both have married foreigners  |
Hmm... an American + an American in Oman... I guess we are both foreigners here!
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basiltherat
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 952
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| Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 6:27 am Post subject: |
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| Everyone has spoken about the difficulties of multi-cultural marraige..can anyone talk about the benefits of them...surely there must be those too |
the following come immediately to mind:
1. with the cultural mix, life is never dull.
2. the food we eat and meals cooked; wouldnt have it any other way. such a variety having food from both
3. the continual challenge of mutual tolerance and understanding. 25 years n still learning.
4. all in all, id say life is more 'colourful'
its hard to compare bc ive never been in any other sort of marriage but my penny's worth.
best
basil |
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Otterman Ollie
Joined: 23 Feb 2004
Posts: 1067
Location: South Western Turkey
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| Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:20 am Post subject: |
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As tempting as it may be to get married to an exotic female from another country going by some of the responses it seems to be a minefield that would make other marriages less challenging maybe even boring .
How do you resolve issues that come up about bringing up the kids is always a major hurdle especially in a country like Turkey . You a re a brave lot ,I just don't want to go there . |
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basiltherat
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 952
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| Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:42 am Post subject: |
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| How do you resolve issues that come up about bringing up the kids |
Yes. This is also a key issue, i think.
In our case:
a lot of discussing
a heavy dose of listening to each other's views.
no quick decisions
a great deal of compromise
....... and most importantly
involving the kids themselves in all discusions/decision making process on matters which concern them directly..
In fact this issue about bringing up kids was discussed extensively between us even before we got married, so we had a pretty comprehensive idea of where we stood. Still, we had differences post -marriage but not ones that were insurmountable.
best
basil |
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jr1965
Joined: 09 Jul 2004
Posts: 175
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| Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:48 am Post subject: |
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| I'm intertested as to whether people made a concious choice to marry a foreigner or whether it just happened to be so. |
I didn't make a conscious choice to marry someone from another country. I met my husband through a mutual friend. I was in San Francisco for a short visit to sort out a visa issue so that I could return to a good job/nice apartment in Seoul. He was in SF pursuing an MFA. I went out for drinks on a Sunday evening with a friend and one of the other people who was there was the guy I'm now married to. We hit it off right away and a month later, I couldn't bring myself to leave him or SF. I gave up the job, apartment and friends in Korea and stayed in SF.
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| without going into details, how do you feel about your decision to get into a 'mixed' marriage and how do your kids cope with being from a 'mixed' marriage? |
I guess I never really thought of our situation as "mixed." Yes, I'm American and he's Spanish, but I think b/c many of my relatives hail from Italy, I found that we shared a lot of common ground�especially when it came to understanding the role that family plays in your life (i.e., they can dominate it at times). If he hadn't been able to "get" my family and I his, our situation never would have worked. So for me, he didn't seem "exotic" at all, but in many ways, very familiar! 
We have daughter and I think she likes the idea that she has an American home and a Spanish one. She speaks Spanish and now that we live in Madrid, she's been able to have more of a relationship with her grandparents and other relatives here (before Spain, we lived in SF near my family). These things are really important for the kids, I think: the language and the connection to family members.
For me, the hardest part remains the language. Basil, I know how your wife feels! I still need to rely on my husband for the official or technical stuff. Example: Our water heater broke last week and I had to deal with the plumber. Of course, there were a number of words I didn't know (I may not have known them in English!), and so I was on the phone to my husband saying: " He said something about a � What exactly is he talking about?" Episodes like this are almost always followed by statements from my in-laws that I need to study Spanish more. ???!!! This kind of thing is very frustrating, and I try to be patient about it b/c I know they (like most people) have never lived in another country or had to speak another lang and don't understand that saying such things is not helpful. 
My husband (whose English is great) dealt with the lang thing, too, when we lived in the States, and we'd go to parties and people would be telling jokes or talking about something (very fast), or making cultural references to things he knew nothing about and he'd be utterly lost in the conversation and eventually bored out of his mind. It drove him crazy. This isn't exactly the kind of thing you can "study" in the classroom, or even b/c you live with someone who speaks that language. I deal with this here, too, when we go to dinner parties or out with his friends. Sometimes, things fly right over my head. I just keep reminding myself to be patient and keep trying. Come to think of it, I often say this about my marriage too.
In terms of the good things, I like Basil's list. All those things apply for me too. |
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MELEE
Joined: 22 Jan 2003
Posts: 2583
Location: The Mexican Hinterland
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| Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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As a long time student of Latin American Studies, I can't deny that one of the benefits about having married my husband is a chance to get to know the culture on a very personal level. I feel I know a Mexico that very few foreigners know. This comes from the combination of someone who is considers herself a student of the culture as some one who has married into the culture. I've met individuals who were either one or the other, but not both, and usually came away with the feeling that I have a better understanding of the culture than they did. But maybe that's just arrogance on my part?
I also love the diet we have created for our household, picking and choosing the best of both cuisines--with other international experimentation thrown in as well.
I love that our children will be native speakers of two of the three largest languages in the world, and are also exposed to a minority at-risk language, which they will hopefully learn to speak as well.
Another linguistic advantage is that my husband and I each have our own personal walking dictionary. When he's studying it's common for him to shout out to me, "What does X mean?" But since I tell him the first meaning that occurs to me, and he's reading Math books, he usually follow that us with "Are you sure?" Even though I tell him over and over again, he forgets to ask me the whole sentence the word is in...
As for the extended family, on his side the two generations before his generation are all fully bilingual and Spanish is their second language so they never mention any language bloopers I might make.
The biggest hurdle is that we are of different religious back grounds. Before becoming parents we decided our children would be exposed to and present both and we would respect their religious freedom as they grow, no obliging them to choose one path or the other. |
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