preamble (a brief joint summary of who we are and what we dodid L[0.1.1])
| The family first came together in 1997 in the
People’s Republic of China, which was the year when my wife and I first met.Surprisingly
the first family members were both expatriates (legal-aliens) in China. Hence,
we are grateful to the PRC of having brought us together - even though they did
not want to permit a marriage of foreigners in their country. Nevertheless the Chinese
authorities made us to go through our first "translation-nirvana",
which - certainly unintentionally - opened our minds even further. |
| Resolving the languages question: A male native German speaker meeting a female native Spanish speaker in China, where their initial only common communication base was English was a major issue to be overcome. The result: We are hosting a page in English language and our everyday life is still by way of communicating mainly in English. Of course the respective native tongues are spoken in the mix on an as needed basis. The interchange in different languages has simply become a part of our everyday life, which others not being part of the family sometimes consider to be strange. We then picked up other languages along the way, from school and the working environment. These being French and Italian. |
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| The major outcome of this coming together is a beautiful
daughter born at the end of the last millennium. She is even more colourful
than the parents, who not only differ in languages but also ethnically and by
continent of origin. The fact that she was born in Germany helps a lot, with
her citizenship being out of question. |
| We could fill a book with stories about anyof the 3
of us being, for many years, in possession of a non-matching family citizenship,
which made us being suspicious as an expatriate family at whatever place we were
staying - in other words: everywhere. This only changed a few years back when
the German authorities could no longer refuse a German passport for my wife as
well. However, by now we feel like aliens in Germany too. |
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In addition we had to cope with the languages in
the different deployment countries (as given by our professional activities),
e.g.: Chinese, Urdu + Arabic
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| Our daughter actually started school in the UAE
with English as her first and Arabic as her second language. What with moving
from project to the next she actually did the first 5 years (not kindergarten /
pre-school) exclusively within the English speaking (English and American)
schooling systems. She studied at: |
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UAE, Fujairah, St. Mary's Catholic School UAE, Dubai, Kings School Dubai, British International school Gabon, AISL, American International School of Libreville |
| Rather than bothering you with a lengthy verbal
description of the various moves we had after leaving China (we decided to
simply add a "banner-style" row of country flags, reflecting all the
major household moves in the past 20 years, being: |
 |
These are only the major moves from country to country. Moves within countries as well as short term excursions / deployments or trips abroad not involving the entire family are not reflected. As a result it's been a life out of the suitcase. Sometimes in a container or out of a hotel-room, which taught us to be at home wherever we were. Or expressed the other way round: You'll find yourself asking the question, where in fact is HOME for us? |
| In an attempt to reflect the truly multi-cultural
background of this small family we have chosen to add the rainbow to the
background picture you are viewing with this page.We are open minded to
different cultures, colours, religions, places and opinions so long as they
have been derived on a considered thought basis. |
| Arriving at this point we want to cite a song title
of DONOVAN: >>Spaceship Earth
<<where the originator had come up decades agowith what type of citizens
we all are - and nobody can change this. |
| Should you view the "Our Map of the
World" page, we need to add that special thanks go to all host-countries /
communities, which received us along the way as professional working
expatriates / legal aliens outside or within Europe. We have spent decades
abroad and know there are lots of sides / points of view to any position. |
| Please
note: This page is self-hosted and does not
rely on any readymade templates, neither cloud or on-line based
services. So
please excuse any imperfections, it is a common learning ground of ours
to keep in touch with all the friends we have made along the way over
the years.. |
And this is how we look like |