Al menos en el voleibol y el boxeo jajajaja 😆
(Y es solo una broma chicos, amo Puerto Rico y a su gente 🇵🇷🇩🇴❤️)
TLDR: I have an Indian passport and grew up in India and the US. But I culturally feel and come across to others (almost) like an American and (almost not at all) like an Indian. Read below for why. Any other TCKs who feel a similar thing, feeling a close connection to one of their places and feeling really foreign/disconnected/incompatible with the other?
I only have an Indian passport and grew up partly in India partly in the US, but I feel much much closer to the US than India. In the US I feel comfortable and at home. I blend in and make friends easily and don't have any trouble really connecting with people. In India, however, even though I speak fluent Hindi, I constantly feel like a foreigner, out of place, and different. It's to the point that I even get along easily with Americans from more obscure parts like Montana and Alabama who have never left the US (the kind of "monocultural" people TCKs often struggle with). In fact, it's to a point where I even feel closer to the people and culture of some countries I've never even visited (like England or Argentina) than I do to other Indians. Hell, if someone random asks me where I'm from I often feel more comfortable saying the US even though neither me nor anyone in my family is a citizen there because that way they will be way less surprised when they hear my accent or American cultural references and slang (like "my way or the highway", "third base", "hail mary" etc).
Not sure why I'm like this. Maybe it is because while in India I went to a school where all the students just spoke English amongst themselves (and rarely if ever Hindi) and were generally really Westernized/Americanized (and many of them were TCKs and ex-US residents too). Maybe it's because I don't consume any Indian pop culture/entertainment while I consume not just globally popular American stuff but also stuff like country and Thanksgiving food (although the NFL is still a bit much for me - though I can understand and follow the action just fine if I do watch). Also my personal values align wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more with American culture than Indian (I'm very individualistic, I despise arranged marriages, I am not at all religious, I love beef, I could go on). Maybe it's because I hate cricket. Maybe it's because I speak English with a totally American accent. Maybe it's because I have way more American friends than Indian ones.
Oh and also for whatever reason all too often when I talk to Indians they notice my accent and sometimes even interrupt me mid-sentence to point it out and then turn the whole conversation into one about the US and my life there and if I'm a foreigner, as if that is the only interesting thing about me. Whereas in the US my Indianness rarely attracts their attention and I feel like they see me way more as one of them (even if they know that I'm Indian) and value me as a whole person instead of reducing me to one small part of my personality. Also I find people in India are also way more nosy (at least with me) and I hate that too. Idk why tf this happens but it does and it annoys me and it probably also makes me feel like I am basically American or at least not Indian. Hell, even when in the States, I rarely mingled with the Indians there and didn't get along that well with them and just stuck to mostly Americans and people from other countries. And given all my family grew up entirely in India, I do feel culturally really distant from them too.
Any other TCK here who feels like I do? Like they belong almost fully to the host country but not at all to the passport country? Because I constantly hear about how TCKs love all their countries and belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time but personally I feel like I basically belong to one place and NOT the other but I don't come across many TCKs feeling that way.