Betty Chen is a Third Culture Kid who has lived in Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. For the next few weeks, she will be blogging on Denizen as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

As I embarked on the last major leg of my journey to self-discovery, I returned home to the place I had lived in for 18 years – Bangkok, Thailand.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.

This was supposed to be my ultimate comfort zone. The place I was going to lay out in the sun and just take a big nap (I know, life is hard). Instead, Bangkok grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. It was like the Ghost of Christmas Past something yanking me out of my bored been-there-done-that slumber, and throwing me into a bevy of Firsts.

Those Firsts included my 10-year high school reunion. While most people may have dreaded and ignored their high school reunion, I had really been looking forward to seeing everyone again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified going into the reunion: I was jobless, husbandless, childless, petless, and I hadn’t even found a cure for cancer! What the heck have I been doing the past 10 years?! My classmates were really going to regret nominating me for “Most Likely to Succeed.”

We had initially gone into the reunion sizing each other up, inadvertent or not:

“What do you do?”
[Translation: Did you become the President of [country of origin] yet?]

“Are you married?”
[Translation: Is he/she rich/a supermodel?]

“Do you have any children?”
[Translation: Are they child prodigies? Why not? What a slacker.]

However, once we all got together, none of that mattered because we were all more or less at the same point in our lives. “What do you do?” was answered surprisingly with a lot of “I just quit my job to pursue my passion” or, “I’m doing ___ now, but looking to switch careers soon.” The “Are you married?” question was few and far between, and the topic of children barely came up. I might not be as far behind in life as I had thought.

We all exhibited classic Third Culture Kid traits: Almost all of us had moved at least once in the past ten years, most of us were unmarried without kids, and many were contemplating a life change with the same frustration of being stuck in a rut.

Others may call this “non-committal behavior,” but as Third Culture Kids, but we just see the world as our playground. I had half-expected the reunion to end with me sobbing myself to sleep with a pint of ice-cream feeling envious of everyone else’s successes, but instead, through rediscovering and reconnecting with my high school friends, I realized that I am right on track.

Another advantage of a long vacation at home is that I am able to give back during a time of need. When I heard of the massive flooding that inflicted Thailand for a few months last fall, I was eager to jump in and volunteer wherever I was needed. The experience became another one of my Firsts.

A friend connected me with a group founded by some fellow TCKs, Bangkok Vanguards, who rallied other expats, foreigners and tourists into a big international group hug. Together, we raised money for flood victims by wiping down cars at major intersections, and visited flood-affected areas over Christmas to deliver presents to the local children. It was like nothing I’ve ever done in my almost-two decade life in Bangkok. It was moving to see a group so diverse get together for a cause so near and dear to my heart.

While the past few months have been packed with travel – Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia – I was happy to find that Bangkok may still have a place for me. Many Third Culture Kids are constantly jumping on a plane to look for the next best thing, but learning to look back wasn’t something I was used to. I often reveled in stretching myself out of my comfort zone, and it surprised me to discover that I actually felt most uncomfortable at home. And in a strange way, it was exactly what I needed right now.

At the end of the day, I learned that it was okay to not know what I want to be when I grow up, and that this was a common trait among Third Culture Kids. Success may seem so elusive right now, but I am exactly where I am meant to be. The important thing is to focus on my passion, and to take the time to find out what I really want. Rarely do we have time or the luxury to do so, and I vowed that I owed this to myself. Whether I do that back in Chicago, or move across the world for my next adventure, I am ready for it!

Illustration for Denizen by Lindsey Ruane

“Lilybet, your Dad’s dead.”

My husband walked into a staff meeting I was co-chairing, using a pet name that no-one apart from my parents had used. I couldn’t believe this had happened.

Dad was young; only 65 and very healthy. The doctors had said as much when he was in the UK just two months ago. But he’d had a sudden stroke, the type that can’t be reversed, and had died within a few hours in a hospital near Shanghai whose name I never learnt, in part of the world I couldn’t locate on Google maps.

I was stunned. I dropped my pens, stood up and burst out into uncontrollable sobbing. Dad was my role model, my best friend, my only true confidante. He was the reason I became a teacher. My brother dropped everything and took the next available flight to Shanghai to be with my Mum while I struggled on through, seeing Dad’s inspiration in every student I saw, grateful for supportive colleagues.

My parents moved to Singapore in 1975, where I was born and raised. I was sent to boarding school in England at 13 when they left for Laos, as they believed it was important for me to know firsthand who I was nationally, to understand the people from my “home country.” It was also for my own safety, as Dad was one of the most watched foreigners in Laos. He was heading up the Anglican Relief and Development Agency at a time when local Christians were regularly shot.

As a daughter of a “military-brat,” home had always been where my parents were, so when people asked me where I came from, the short version included my place of birth, Singapore, passport country, UK, and my parents’ current location, China. Like many, I had both many homes and none simultaneously. But now, with my Dad’s sudden death, I’d lost the place I felt most at home.

We all know what it’s like to lose our home, to be suddenly uprooted from our friends, pets, favourite spots and familiar weather. We’ve all been through it: parents transported to another posting, or send us “back” to our passport countries. I was used to that, having lived in 27 houses and attended 15 schools. I’d developed my coping strategies, like everyone else — make friends quickly and keep roots shallow. Know that you’ll never feel at home anywhere.

What I hadn’t factored in was that Dad had a weak heart like his Dad, and would be gone long before I’d spent enough time with him. Now, instead of not feeling at home in England, in my husband’s house or the places I’d lived as a child, I didn’t feel at home in the world. My parents’ house, my one, true home, no longer existed anywhere. I felt extremely claustrophobic. The world wasn’t big enough for me anymore as it no longer included my Dad. I felt a sting each time I saw a plane passing overhead from my house near Heathrow Airport as I realised that Dad would never come home on one.

My best friend, Sal, whose Dad had died from his third heart attack exactly a year before, took me out for dinner and thought she could help by telling me about her feelings of loss, but we quickly discovered our experiences were worlds apart, quite literally. She’d always lived in the same town, gone home every weekend and came from a very tight community, so experienced a full-on and relatively short-lived bereavement, at least in its intensity. I, however, could block out feelings of loss and pain as I’d become accustomed to not having Dad around, not seeing him as often as I’d like, having my letters lost in the mail en-route to yet another developing country. But the odd experience would open a Pandora’s box of emotion for me, like this Christmas.

I’d always flown home to spend Christmas with Mum and Dad wherever they were, going to the local church service and buying tonnes of presents for him as his birthday was January 3rd. This year, I went to my in-laws instead and shed a few tears as Christmas Day dawned bright and early in an unfamiliar portico, and again when I was sitting down to a traditional English roast instead of going to the best restaurant in town.

This year has changed me in many ways. I am no longer so scared of life as I realise when I die, I will be with my Dad, so I have scaled a few mountains. I have realized that home is not some far-off country but where I am, and I want to enjoy my surroundings. I call my Mum every day and see her every month, as she is now 73 miles away, not 5,800.

I am also much more eager to reach out to others and serve them in whatever way instead of seeing what I can get for myself. For Dad’s birthday, I had lots of presents that I’d already bought that no longer had a destination, so they were sold on to raise money for charity. I found other ways to remember him, like setting off a number of Chinese lanterns in that day’s gale-force conditions in our back garden. This year, I opened up my home to strangers in my local community to help me celebrate my birthday. It’s what Dad would want, and as he’s no longer around to help me and those around “enjoy life in all its fullness” — his life motto. It’s up to me to do that in whatever way I can.

“One more question,” he had asked nonchalantly, after I finished presenting the paper I had spent two months working on. “Based on your research, do you think that historians and we as Americans should hold a better view of President Nixon and credit him with doing more for the country as a whole than we do now?”

I had just argued that Nixon’s move to initiate relations with China symbolized a re-envisioning of foreign policy that was critical during that era of American history.

The obvious answer seemed to be yes. Because of Nixon’s adamant steps toward U.S.-Chinese reconciliation, the United States had ceased to base its foreign policy primarily in Cold War terms and began to look instead at strategic advances that foreign relations might hold. This, in general, seemed to be a good thing.

But something stopped me from blurting that answer. “You mean, me personally?” I asked my professor.

Illustration for Denizen by Mary Lundquist

“Well, yeah,” he replied, a little confused by my response.

Still, I hesitated. I realized that I would feel guilty for voicing support for Nixon. This guilt stemmed not from scorning the criminal acts that Nixon engaged in later on in his presidential career. Rather, it came from a feeling of sudden patriotism for Taiwan, the country of my birth. It’s a country that the United States has not officially recognized since the 1970’s. Because of Nixon. By condoning the actions of President Nixon, I felt that I would, in a sense, be betraying the country that I had spent ninety percent of my childhood in.

The decision seemed insignificant, and I knew what the right answer had to be, but in those moments, I felt two parts of myself conflict more vividly and tangibly than they had in many, many months. A simple classroom question suddenly became a personal question of patriotism.

On the one side, my life as a TCK growing up in Taiwan flashed before my eyes—the way that I felt more comfortable in a crowd of Asians than a crowd of Caucasians; the way that on official documents I had to try Taiwan, Republic of China, or R.O.C. before finally realizing that in the United States’ eyes, I was born in China; the way that I’d gotten so excited when I saw the Taiwan flag in Vatican City because it was one of the thirty-some countries that recognized my country of birth.

On the other side, though, stood my American passport, my blonde hair and blue eyes, my East coast accent, and the assumption that I, like nearly every other American in attendance at my college, saw the United States as the best thing that could even happen to the world.

And then, somewhere in the middle of my two conflicted identities, sat the two months of research that I had done for this paper. The dusty volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States articles still sat on my desk in my dorm room. My twenty-page paper saved in multiple drafts on my computer seemed to scream at me. This was the hard evidence, all of which pointed to the answer being yes, that Nixon’s decision to open relations with China—and thus neglect the United States’ promises to my country of Taiwan—were advantageous for the United States, and as a result greatly benefited America in the long run.

I looked at my professor. “Personally,” I told him, “I’m not a fan of the way Nixon switched recognition to the PRC for personal reasons.” A couple of chuckles from friends who knew me came from the audience. “But at the same time, I do think that Nixon pursued some policies in this situation that were beneficial for the United States, and so in this sense, the answer to your question is yes.”

I had never realized that separating my personal allegiances from research could be so difficult. It was a separation that American students probably wouldn’t have had to make. But for me, it made me realize that TCKs have a distinct advantage in the world, a broader global perspective. I can have a discussion, be able to consider another viewpoint, and yet still be able to keep my own views intact. May we continue to think objectively, and seek to understand others’ perspectives, be they cultural or personal.

Some time ago, I was visiting my grandmother in Toronto. Like a typical grandmother, she immediately sat us down and brought out tea, snacks and several photo albums. As we browsed through old photos of our relatives, one picture caught my eye.

“This is a picture of grandpa,” I said as I looked at the unfamiliar landscape behind him. “Where is he in this photo?”

My cousin peered over. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think this might have been Nigeria.”

“What was he doing there?” I asked.

“He worked there for a few years. You didn’t know?”

That took me by surprise. I’ve never known my grandfather that well, since our family was always on the move and my sister and I only saw our grandparents a few times each year. I always remembered him as a quiet, but kindly old man. He was the last person I would expect as a global nomad.

From what I discovered, my grandfather traveled more than I could have ever imagined. As a young man in the 1940s, he studied journalism in Shanghai while being a student activist who took part in the Communist Movement. After the war, he worked at a textile company in Chongqing before becoming disenchanted with the Communist ideology and moving to Hong Kong. It was there he raised his family, including my mother and two uncles.

Last summer, I had a chance to visit my parents in Shanghai. I took the opportunity to learn more about him from my mother.

“It’s true,” she said. “He started moving in the late 70s. They were just starting to build new textile factories in Nigeria, and they needed experienced foremen to supervise the operations. The companies started looking for people in Hong Kong, and he answered the call.”

“But why did he go to Nigeria of all places?” I asked.

“Your uncles and I had all just left for university then,” she said solemnly. “They offered a good salary and he needed the extra money to support us while we were overseas.”

“Back then, we didn’t think too much of it. We couldn’t visit him since airfare wasn’t cheap and you needed a lot of vaccinations before you went to Africa. It wasn’t until much later when we realized that he kept a lot of details to himself. He worked in a small town and the living standards were tough, and since a lot of the workers were untrained, he had to take responsibility for a lot of production problems. It was actually much harder on him than we thought.”

In spite of this, my grandfather didn’t stop there. After two and a half years in Nigeria, he followed the company’s new expansions and worked in Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia before immigrating to Canada where his grandchildren had been born.

“That’s the thing with your grandpa. He had an adventurous streak, and had always loved to travel. Even though he went on his own most of the time, he would always manage to find other people from Hong Kong who worked in the same country. He was a good person who made friends very quickly.”

My grandfather was just like me: a global nomad.

My mother and I share a memory from many years ago, back when I was very young. We were staying over at my grandparents in Hong Kong one summer, when I woke up one morning to a loud commotion outside my room. As a boy, I didn’t fully understand what was happening then. I remember seeing a crowd of medics and a police officer standing in the living room. They hovered over my grandfather, who sat in a wheelchair at the center of the room.

I remember feeling panicked. “What’s going on?” I asked. “What are they doing with grandpa?”

“He isn’t feeling that well. But it’s going to be alright, they’re just taking him to the hospital,” my mother said reassuringly.

After saying our goodbyes, my grandfather was wheeled out of the apartment.

It was the last time I ever saw him.

My grandfather had been fighting colon cancer for many months before he was taken to the hospital. It had been a few more months before he lost his battle. I was only eight years old then– too young to visit him at his bedside.

“It was many years ago, but I still miss him,” my mother said quietly. “But we’ve moved around so much since then. Sometimes I imagine that he’s still alive, just living in another country,” she smiled softly.

In many ways, my grandfather is in another country, watching over us. Sometimes I look back on the kindly old man who I had barely known. I reflect on his accomplishments, the roads he traveled, the family that he raised, and I think to myself: what must my generation look like to him?

For most of us, we travel the world for countless reasons. Often times, we set out to explore new people and places, finding something about ourselves along the way. My grandfather had long known what was important to him. Out of love, he was willing to live and work in places that he had never been to, risking it all in support of his family.

I miss my grandfather, and I will never forget him or the things he has done. When I find myself at crossroads, I often think back to the decisions he made—those that shaped my mother’s life, and mine in return. Wherever I may go and on whichever path I might follow, I will always remember the reasons my grandfather traveled, and look to him for guidance.

Betty Chen is a Third Culture Kid who has lived in Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. For the next few weeks, she will be blogging on Denizen as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

The last time I hit a quarter-life crisis, I moved across the country to a city where I knew only three people and started a job in a company of 1,000 employees. Just because I was bored.

Now it’s quarter-life crisis #2. Having just been laid-off, I began re-prioritizing my life. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. With my 100 hour work weeks, I used to dream about what I would do if I could just take one day off. Sleep in. Go to the park. Read in a coffee shop. Make dinner. Call an old friend. Finish a bottle of red wine by myself. I was overjoyed to realize that for the first time in my life, I was able to do all this… and more.

Now that I was in charge of my timeline, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I booked a flight home to Bangkok. But with the massive floods going on, I had to make some adjustments. So, the first stop was my secondary home base of Taipei, Taiwan.

While I was born in Taipei, and visited frequently growing up, I had not spent much time there as an adult. I had grown detached from my own home country, and this was my chance to reclaim my roots. In a TCK world, it is not uncommon to find our families fragmented around the world. In my re-prioritized life, I wanted to spend time with family, and finally make those family reunions I had been missing.

Returning to Taiwan felt like any other previous visit: Eating at favorite restaurants. Gathering at family dinners. Shrieking over how cheap shoes were. Showing my 90-year-old grandma exactly where in the world Chicago was, and then patiently explaining to why I lived so far away.

But yet, something was innately different about my visit this time around. Having allowed myself more time there, Taiwan was ripe for rediscovery. I traveled around the island sightseeing new places, and revisiting familiar sites. I paid attention to Asian history and its impact on my own country. I discovered new food (a feat in itself considering that I’ve done my share of eating). Above all, I deepened my relationship with my very big family of loud relatives, cousins and nephews. I was no longer a foreign object they saw once in awhile who flitted in and out of the country. I became one of them, of the family.

To me, Taiwan represented a neglected relationship that had grown apart, mostly because of the lack of effort on my part. This three week trip was the longest I’d ever spent there since I was a child, and the forlorn country proved to be charming, fun and even romantic at times.

With the floods finally receding, I will be heading to Bangkok, Thailand next. It’s the city I spent 18 years in, but because of its fast-paced growth, it’s perpetually foreign each time I come home. This time I will be able to see home through the different lenses of friends visiting and my 10 year high school reunion. I know, right? Say it isn’t so.

I often find it ironic and a bit difficult to explain the fact that I find my own home countries so foreign, despite spending the majority of my life there. This journey of homecoming and self-discovery will hopefully, and finally, give me the chance to belong somewhere.

If you had an unlimited amount of time to explore the world — would you go home? What would be the first thing you’d do?

Recently, a huge opportunity presented itself: I was laid off, hence, joining the army of advertising folks who had met the same fate. Initially, I was shocked. I knew the lay-offs were coming, but was under false pretenses I thought I would be immune from this. After all, I did know 3.5 more languages than the usual population (even though the only one I used was marketing jargon)!

This was not the ideal situation, but I quickly realized that it answered my long time desire for (temporary) “early retirement” and an escape from a job that I was miserable at. As a TCK with self-diagnosed ADD, I believed that life should never get to the point of staleness and complacency. This was my opportunity to make the change that I had been craving.

On my 10 minute walk home after the dastardly blow to my ego, I suppressed the nervous wrenching in my stomach, the “What should I do now?!” cloud hanging over my head, the “What am I going to tell my parents?” conversation, and allowed myself to dream.

I’m free! I can do anything! Go anywhere! For an inordinate amount of time! Or at least until my savings run out. I deserve this, I told myself. A new job can wait.

The minute I entered my apartment, I tossed all my papers aside and jumped on my computer, immediately logging onto all the travel sites I could find. This was an instant cure to the anxiety brewing beneath the surface. Within a few minutes, I had the next three months planned: New York, San Francisco, Kentucky, Costa Rica, and a whirlwind trip around Asia. Although each of these trips represented significance in my newly triggered second coming of my quarter-life crisis, the Asia leg of my “retirement” was going to be the crux of my self-discovery.

With my parents still in my hometowns of Bangkok and Taipei, I’ve had the luxury of visiting every year since I’d left at age 18 (?), but never really had the time to really get acquainted. A week’s worth of visit usually involved a flurry of errands, appointments, family and friends, and if I’m lucky, making the rounds of my favorite restaurants. Before I knew it, I was boarding a plane to travel 30 hours back to Chicago.

Once I got up the courage to tell my parents — they were surprisingly supportive of my new plans. Having grown up in an overachieving culture, I was nervous to reveal my premature “retirement.” My dad had worked at the same company in Thailand for over 30 years, and here I am, in my 20s and “burnt out” (read: bored). My now non-existent career aside, I patiently explained that it was blasphemous that I had only lived in four cities my entire life, when there was a world out there to be explored. If I was going to be a global citizen, I needed to start now.

This is a turning point in my life. I’m not sure where exactly I will be “turning” to, but the prospect of freedom without needing to count vacation days was incredibly appealing. I’m ready for a career change, a move, and anything unrelated to my present condition.

And I can’t wait to take you on this journey with me as I embrace the familiar, and explore the unfamiliar.

Share with us in the comments: Have you recently faced a big life change? What advice would you give Betty?

I’ve always been a public transportation guy. I grew up in Japan, where trains are as ubiquitous as ramen noodles, chopsticks, and tiny cell phones. When I went to the United States for college, I expected to be introduced to car culture: drive-thrus, parking tickets, spinning rims. But I ended up in Boston, home to the nation’s first subway.

I credit the T, Boston’s affectionate nickname for its train, for my relationship with the city. The T is a hybrid: part underground subway, part above-ground trolley. When I lived in Boston, it was free to take the train outbound, as long as you got on at an above-ground stop. So after spending the day downtown I would walk to Fenway Park, the closest station from which I could catch a free ride back home. It didn’t matter how far I had to walk or how cold it was, the free ride was always worth it. In this way I got to know the city intimately, the streets and shortcuts, the corner stores and coffee shops.

After college I moved to San Francisco. San Francisco is home to America’s scariest subway. Every morning I sat in silent terror as the train rumbled under the bay from Berkeley, where I lived, to San Francisco, where I worked. I couldn’t help thinking: the worst place to be during an earthquake must be in the ground, under a large body of water.

A year later I ended up in New York City, home to America’s liveliest, and probably dirtiest, subway. I once saw a man let loose a live dove in a crowded train, terrifying a group of young girls. He’s one of the few subway performers I’ve given money to. I’ve also seen men let loose other things on the subway, validating New York’s unseemly reputation.

At this point I’d pretty much spent my entire adulthood in the United States without needing a car. Then I moved to Guam.

Guam is a tiny U.S. territory in between Japan and Australia. I’d gotten a new job, and I was looking forward to a new move. But I was anxious about the trip. Not only was I going so far away, but I’d finally have to get behind the wheel. The closest thing to public transportation on the island is the back of a pickup truck. But, I thought, this was my chance for freedom and adventure, the kind they talk about in the stories and songs. It was my chance to travel unconstrained by schedules and rails.

My first day on Guam I met my new boss, who immediately brought me to a car rental place. After all those years walking, busing, and cramming into trains, my driving skills had deteriorated. It had been two years since I’d driven— and that was in my parents’ car in Japan, where they drive on the left side of the road. I got into the rental and tailed my boss nervously to the office parking lot. Surprised at the lack of incident so far, I confidently swung into a tight spot. Too confidently, it turned out. I scraped the side of my shiny blue Hyundai on a parking garage barrier with a sickening screech. My boss ended up parking the car for me. So much for first impressions.

In desperate need of crash course in driving and without a teacher, I turned to my most trusted resource: the internet. Turns out I could get free driving lessons on YouTube. (Other skills I’ve picked up on YouTube: how to crush garlic, how to play the guitar, and how to kill time with a light bulb and a microwave). After the online advice and a couple hours in a parking lot, I was able to brush up enough to save my rental from anything worse than that scratch on the passenger door.

Soon after, I bought my first car– a creaky, decade-old white Toyota Corolla with windows so tinted I could be mistaken for an FBI agent, or drug dealer. The passenger side door handle in the back seat snapped off, the tires needed to be replaced, and there was a disturbing grinding noise every time I hit a bump in the road. I loved my car.

I’ve gotten used to car culture. I love driving fast, listening to loud music, and feeling the wind sweep against my arm perched on the window. But there’s something I miss about trains. Maybe it’s the cheap fare, or the time to read and daydream. Maybe it’s the people and performers. Maybe it’s the cities that the trains are in.

It’s true that we sing songs and tell stories about cars. But most of my adventures, I realize, haven’t come from driving a car— they’ve come from riding a train. And that’s fine. There are songs and stories about trains too.

Justin Bedard, 28, talks with participants in one of his JUMP! programs.

Justin Bedard, 28, is the executive director of the JUMP! Foundation, a nonprofit focused on global citizenship and youth development. He spent his childhood in Asia and Canada before returning to Beijing to start the JUMP! Foundation in 2006.

As a co-founder of the Western Academy of Beijing Wild Outdoor Education Program, Bedard began creating experiential outdoor programs throughout the school year designed to build leadership and growth through physical and adventurous activities. The initiative grew into the JUMP! Foundation, which has developed leadership programs throughout the world from Beijing to South Africa to Uzbekistan.

1. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
I was born in Lilongwe, Malawi, and grew up in Yogakarta, Indonesia; Calgary, Canada; and Beijing, China.

2. When did you start getting interested in community development?
As long as I can remember, community has always been a core value of who I am and why I do what I do. The development of communities – mine and others – has always been something that has driven me. Perhaps it’s because my father is a development worker by trade. Perhaps it’s because my mom is a Montessori schoolteacher. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in and surrounded by cultures that have a strong sense and value of community. Perhaps it’s a combination of all of these factors.

3. How did you get to where you are now?
First, my parents. They have always supported my passion for youth development work. When moral support and advice is needed, they step in. If financial support is needed, they step in sometimes.

Second, the network of friends and contacts I’ve developed while going to high school at the International School of Beijing. The board of directors of JUMP! consists of two classmates from ISB and others that I have met through the international school networks.

Finally, lots of hard work, lots of risk and lots of failures – lots of learning.

4. Where did the concept of JUMP! come from?
The initial JUMP! program was developed as a pilot leadership training program for the Western Academy of Beijing in the spring of 2006. With the success of the initial program, schools and organizations started to ask for similar programs for their youth. In 2008, a group of international facilitators gathered around a picnic table in Capetown, South Africa, and decided there was a need to create a training program that would develop a sense of global leadership in tomorrow’s youth. So we started an organization to build the pilot program into a global leadership program.

5. What’s your typical day like?
The best part of what we do is that nothing is really typical. We are endlessly innovating and creating new programs, connections, partnerships and business. The obvious things include lots of emails and phone calls, organizational and project team meetings. When we are facilitating a program in an international school, travel is usually part of the day – so lots of time in the emergency seat exit of an airplane. Then, during our programs, we spend lots of time challenging youth through hands on games and team initiatives. So I basically get to play games all day long. For our JUMP! Experiences programs, I get to travel to places like Istanbul and Cairo and support youth in exploring another cultures. It’s hard to find a typical day.

6. How does being a TCK benefit your career?
Most important, the global connections. It would be rare for me to arrive into a city and not have a friend who is there to give me a place to crash or a business connection. I can safely say that a considerable amount of JUMP’s development has been fueled by my TCK network. Also, I believe the unique global perspective I was provided as a TCK adds great value to our organization and the programs we develop.

7. What do your programs consist of?
Our JUMP! Schools programs are delivered on school campuses and filled with interactive games, challenges and initiatives that are followed by facilitated discussions on leadership and community. Topics include personal leadership, community leadership and global leadership.

Our JUMP! Experience programs are delivered off campus and are more adventure and travel based programs that explore the themes of personal, community and global leadership through physical and cultural challenges.

8. How does it feel to get the opportunity to educate young TCKs with your programs?
I love it. I love working with non-TCKs too.

9. Where in the world has JUMP! implemented programs?
Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore, Tashkent, Istanbul, Milan, Dusseldorf, Zurich, Geneva, Berlin, Washington D.C., New York, Toronto, Vancouver and a couple other places.

10. What advice would you give to TCKs who want to pursue a career in community development and education?
Access and utilize the networks that you have through your fellow TCKers and their parents.

Standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, I was a college sophomore, realizing for the first time in a while that I was still capable of experiencing awe. It was a feeling I had thought was lost to me, the jaded traveler, and completely nonexistent in the U.S., a country so far from exotic I didn’t even need a visa to enter.

In truth, the United States was one of the most foreign countries I had ever visited.

As the daughter of a foreign service officer, I spent my youth building a resistance to wonderment. My father, born and raised on Long Island, was thrilled to relocate our family again and again—Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Taiwan—and less thrilled that we didn’t share his enthusiasm.

When I was in middle school, my dad took us to Turkey.

“It’s the Black Sea!” he bellowed against the wind as we stood on a scraggly cliff, looking down into the water. “Why aren’t you more excited?”

Yeah Dad, very cool. Looks kind of like the Caspian. Not as blue as the Mediterranean. Can we go back to the hotel now?

To me, the great mysteries of the world were on the other side of the Atlantic—like supermarkets stocked with entire aisles of just cereal. During our brief visits to the U.S. in the summertime, I became my father, urging everyone to take another look.

“Eighteen different varieties!” I bellowed. “And that’s just the bran cereals!”

After nearly 18 years of living abroad, the white rabbit came knocking on my door: I was Alice, and I was very late for my date with my identity as an American. After tumbling down the rabbit hole and into a Boston University dormitory, I emerged to find social norms had been turned on their head. I had to relearn the simplest of behaviors, from how to greet new friends (two kisses yields bizarre reactions) to how to communicate via telephone (I instantly hated texting). My roommate Megan, an old friend from Budapest and a fellow confused nomad, shared my sense of vertigo. We couldn’t call ourselves American when we were clearly immigrants, so we decided to spend the summer after freshman year working on our repatriation. We picked an adventure that Hollywood had taught us was pure Americana: the road trip.

To me, the U.S. had always represented stagnation, not adventure. Yes, it was nice to have the option of buying orange juice with six degrees of pulpiness, but it was also too easy. The U.S. was air conditioning and pre-sliced bread, roads with no potholes that led to Nowhere Special. My goal for the road trip was to soak up as many uniquely American experiences as possible. We would eat breakfast at Denny’s, pose like goofy tourists at Four Corners, crash at campgrounds. But nothing was going to surprise me.

Then five days into the trip, a friend invited me, an adamant gun control advocate, to go skeet shooting on his ranch outside of Dallas. As it turns out, shattering clay pigeons into pieces is gleefully satisfying. And after a lifetime of cracking Dukes of Hazzard jokes about all formerly Confederate states, I was won over by the hospitality of the South.

Over the next few weeks, we soaked up jazz in New Orleans. We shared a campfire with a group of Mormons in Yosemite and bonfires on the beach with fellow hostel guests in San Diego. A friend from the hostel, Nico, showed me how to detail a car—and suddenly I was a girl who could open the hood of a car and point out the carburetor.

When it was time to move on from San Diego, Nico helped us repair Bonnie (our affectionately named, sputtering Bonneville) and sent us back on the pothole-less road in the direction of the Grand Canyon. It was by no means our final destination, just one more Wonder of the World to check off the list. We camped a short walk from the rim, but trees obstructed our view of the incredible landscape. When I finally saw the canyon, not even the jaded traveler could cringe at the cliched phrase that came to mind: awe-inspiring.

Every time we got close enough to see the massive canyon, it took my breath away. If I so much as turned my back on the view and then spun around I would squeal again, like a patient with short-term memory loss receiving the same present day after day.

I put myself in the boots of pioneers exploring the west and tried to imagine what it would be like to truly experience the canyon for the first time. What would it be like to stumble upon this geological marvel without knowing what you had found? I realized that their desire to travel didn’t make the pioneers unpatriotic, but a part of the country’s deep-rooted history of exploration. It is a part of the American identity, and a part of me.

Photo captions (in order): Sarah at the Grand Canyon; first breakdown in Texas; Megan driving in Texas; Megan at the Grand Canyon; Sarah at the Four Corners; Sarah at a hostel in California; Sarah reaches the Pacific Ocean after 3,000 miles of driving; Sarah on a ferry in New Orleans.

Brian Linton, 24, was recently named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s list of “America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs.” A lifelong lover of water, Linton decided that creating a business was the best way to have a real impact on cleaning the oceans in a globalized way. Linton grew up in Singapore and created United by Blue in 2010, a clothing and accessories brand that pledges to cleanup one pound of trash from the ocean for every product they sell. United by Blue apparel and accessories are available in more than 350 retailers around the United States, including Whole Foods and Urban Outfitters.

1. What inspired you to create United by Blue?
I never really thought much about it until I got to college and I started thinking about what type of thing I wanted to do with my life. Do I want to go into marine conservation? Do I want to go into ocean marine biology, live on a boat and study the ocean and pursue grants and funding to make that happen? Or do I want to make a lot of money and use that as a means to create real, massive change for the oceans, rivers and streams?

The concept behind the name United by Blue is that we’re all united by water. That means that the water that passes through the straits of Johor Bahru is ultimately connected to the water passing through Philadelphia. So there’s no sense of thinking in localized environmental efforts when we can think of the world as a whole – as one big, intertwined eco-system that we need to protect.

2. How has being a TCK prepared you for the work you’re doing now?
I’m doing what I’m doing because of my upbringing and my understanding of the world as a big picture. When it comes to business and environmental conservation, [many people] think in localized ways. But with a TCK background, what I’ve always had is a globalized mindset to both business and environmental conservation.

I think that because I grew up overseas, not thinking of my home as a central location but as a global world has really allowed me to branch out much sooner than what a company normally would do. Not being scared of going off and expanding business in Asia. Japan is going to make up about half of our stores.

3. You were chosen as a finalist for America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs by Bloomberg Businessweek. How has your age helped or hindered the work that you do?
I think 24 is not that young anymore. Sometimes people do bring up the fact that, “Oh, wow you’re so young and doing this.” To them, it’s a surprise. But to me, it’s just a regularity of life. Maybe it does have innate advantages because it does make more of a story. I think that the American media loves the idea of young and successful, and I think that is something that can be leveraged to the benefit of the company.

4. What has been the best moment of starting your own company?
Our business, United by Blue, has associated every single business transaction with a concrete environmental action. By associating every transaction with removing pound of trash from the oceans and waterways, we’re able to create a closed loop between the environmental side and the for-profit side.

One of the most exciting things that happens is when an individual customer is involved in that closed loop. A customer that purchased a shirt at the store or online, and then they end up volunteering for a United by Blue cleanup. They’re really into the mission, they’re wearing their stuff, they talk about it on Facebook, and they become a repeat customer, and repeat volunteer and repeat advocate.

5. How do the cleanups work?
We do cleanups almost every week. The cleanups are all company organized and hosted. Our retailers benefit from a co-hosting a cleanup because it’s basically the store’s name and United by Blue clean-up. We’re going to do all of the work, logistics, planning, waste management, supplies, volunteer management, prizes – you simply help by putting up some posters, putting some flyers in bags, and getting volunteers from your network.

There’s also an innate marketing relationship because now we’re working with the store on a deeper level than we would by just by selling products to them. We’re now selling more products as a result and we’re creating strong relationships with the owners. We’ve got [cleanups] in almost 20 U.S. states now.

6. What other areas in business or conservation would you like to explore in the future?
I think we can grow United by Blue into an organization that is selling many, many different product offerings that have to do with consumer goods and lifestyle. We want to be largest organization that is removing trash from the environment in the world. We want to be a beacon of education that can be used by schools to educate people about the harm of ocean trash. Hopefully in the long run we can help reduce the amount of trash that gets dumped into the ocean.