You Know You're a Global Nomad When...

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A GLOBAL NOMAD WHEN…

• You can’t answer the question, “Where are you from?”
• You flew before you could walk.
• You have a passport, but no driver’s license.
• National Geographic (or the Travel Channel) makes you homesick.
• Your run into someone you know at every airport.
• You have a time zone map next to your telephone.
• Your life story uses the phrase “Then we went to…”
• You speak with authority on the quality of airline travel.
• You read the international section before the comics.
• You live at school, work in the tropics, and go home for vacation.
• You sort your friends by continent.
• Someone brings up the name of a team, and you get the sport wrong.
• You know there is no such thing as an international language.
• Your second major is in a foreign language you already speak.
• You realize it really is a small world, after all.
• You watch a movie set in a foreign country, and you know what the nationals are really saying into the camera.
• Rain on a tile patio –or a corrugated metal roof–is one of the most wonderful sounds in the world.
• You haggle with the checkout clerk for a lower price.
• Your wardrobe can only handle two seasons: wet and dry.
• Your school memories include those days that school was cancelled due to coups (or tear gas or riots or demonstrations or bomb threats or…).
• You have a name in at least two different languages, and it’s not the same one.
• You think VISA is a document stamped in your passport, and not a plastic card you carry in your wallet.
• You automatically take off your shoes as soon as you get home.
• Your home looks a little like a museum with all the memorabilia you have around.
• You won’t eat Uncle Ben’s rice because it doesn’t stick together.
• Half of your phone calls are unintelligible to those around you.
• You go to Pizza Hut or Wendy’s and you wonder why there’s no chili sauce.
• You know the geography of the rest of the world, but you don’t know the geography of your own country.
• You have best friends in 5 different countries.
• You’re spoiled. You know it. You’re VERY spoiled.
• You ask your roommate when the maid service is scheduled to come clean the room.
• You subscribe to magazines normally found only in libraries.
• You have a fixation with ethnic restaurants.
• You involuntarily use foreign swear words and interjections.
• You started university in one place & transferred several times, including a stint as an exchange student.
• After a few years of being in one place you start to get itchy feet so you redecorate your home for a change of scenery.
• You accidentally start speaking to people in a foreign language.
• You don’t automatically go to put on your seatbelt.
• You’ve said that you’re from foreign country X, and your audience has asked you which US state X is in.
• You are exasperated by Americans’ geographical ignorance.
• You speak two languages, but can’t spell in either.
• You feel odd being in the ethnic majority.
• You have three passports.
• You go into culture shock upon returning to your “home” country.
• You wince when people mispronounce foreign words.
• You don’t know whether to write the date as day/month/year, month/day/year, or some variation thereof.
• The best word for something is the word you learned first, regardless of the language.
• You get confused because US money isn’t colour-coded or different sizes.
• And when it comes to the coins, the dime is smaller than the nickel, but it’s worth more!
• You own personal appliances with 3 types of plugs, know the difference between 110 and 220 volts, 50 and 60 cycle current, and realize that a transformer isn’t always enough to make your appliances work.
• You fried a number of appliances during the learning process.
• You think the Pledge of Allegiance might possibly begin with “Four-score and seven years ago….”
• You believe vehemently that football is played with a round, spotted ball.
  You consider a city 500 miles away “very close.”
• You cruise the Internet looking for fonts that can support foreign alphabets & have the keyboard toggle switching amongst them.
• You think in the metric system and Celsius.
• You may have learned to think in feet and miles as well, after a few years of living (and driving) in the US. (But not Fahrenheit. You will *never* learn to think in Fahrenheit).
• You miss the subtitles when you see the latest movie.
• You have frequent flyer accounts on multiple airlines.
• You constantly want to use said frequent flyer accounts to travel to new places.
• You know how to pack.
• You have the urge to move to a new country every couple of years.
• The thought of sending your (hypothetical) kids to public school scares you, while the thought of letting them fly alone doesn’t at all.
• Your yearbook had more than one language in it.
• When people say “South” you don’t immediately think of Texas and Louisiana.
• You are tired of people exclaiming, “Your English is good! Where did you learn it?”
• Your family uses expressions from many countries.
• You know what the term “third culture kid” means.
• The US is referred to as “the States”.
• And you don’t call it “America” because you know that that’s a whole CONTINENT!!
• You lived on ramen noodles before college.
• You just facebooked people you haven’t spoken to in over 6-8 years.
  You know the TRUE extent to which McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are spread over the world.
• Other kids’ “school bus fire safety” drills were your “school bus riot safety” drills.
• Your school bus was not yellow.
• You don’t understand the college fascination with alcohol — you’ve been drinking since you were 12… usually in bars.
• You greet your friends in various ways (some you shake hands, some you hug, some you kiss, some you kiss 4 times!!…)
• You know that the way you hand money (or business cards) to someone is different depending on where you are.
• You love to hear people speak a language you don’t even understand.
• In fact, you love to listen to singers you don’t understand either!
• It’s a game to you to guess what language you hear at the table next to you.