Where’s “home”? England.

Is it Home? No.

So why does everyone call it that? I haven’t lived there in 5 YEARS! So why do we have “home” assignment and why does everyone talk about how we’re coming home?

I’m sort of having mixed feelings about all this. Sometimes I’m excited, the idea of a foreign country, a new culture, the chance to start again can be so attractive.

But Bangladesh is all I’ve ever known! I don’t know how to live in England! It’s not yet 20 degrees and I’m already starting to get chilblains!

I’ll be leaving behind everything: my whole life; my classmates; my friends; my adopted families.

I’ll be leaving behind Bubbles and Jen. They’re my best friends. I’ve been best friends with Bubbles since I was 5 years old! We don’t even remember how, where or when we met. It doesn’t really matter. She’s my best friend.

I’ll be leaving my new friends as well.

Besides Bubbles and Jen there are another two girls and three boys. I’ve learn’t how to socialize with those guys. How to mix languages and scold the boys for being rude. Throwing bottles at each other’s heads and blaming it on each other, laughing at the boys as they stuff all of the sweets in their mouths when we ask them to hold a bag of them. Ridiculing aunties and Uncles and other kids. We’re pure silliness. But we’re definitely not English.

I don’t know how to socialize with English people. Here people who hardly know me talk about their feelings easily to me. They say I’m easy to trust and give good advice. But I don’t know how to get English kids to trust me.

So even though I’m excited about going to England, I will miss Bangladesh.

I will miss my friends: Adh, Setu, Jen and Bubbles. I will miss all the characters - like You Know Who, one-against-four-girls boy and Bablu.

This is my Home and although I will manage, someday, to make England my home with a small ‘h’, Bangladesh will always be my Home with a capital ‘H’.

Amory Powell

11-13

England, Bangladesh

justathirdculturekid.wordpress.com

Curious - Understanding - Persevering

This is one in a series of excerpts from the soon-to-be published The Worlds Within TCK Anthology.  A portion of the book’s profits will be donated to the FIGT David C Pollock Scholarship Fund.