About Airports and Flying: From the TCK Perspective

For people growing up in other countries, travelling sounds pretty exotic and colorful. I'm sure you people vividly remember your first plane trip to Spain, or your first road trip across Europe, or whatever. You remember exactly what it felt like to buckle those weird silver seat-belts for the first time and recall the fear that came with the rattling and whining of a plane speeding down the runway ready for takeoff.

Fortunately for me, travelling is something I've grown up with. I don't remember my first plane flight, because it happened when I was only a few months old. I don't remember the first time I crossed into a new continent, because it happened then too. For me, airports and planes are the norm. Or at least, it's something that doesn't scare me. In fact, I find take-offs and landings exhilarating. I love the feeling I get in my stomach when the plane lifts off the ground for the first time, like my stomach is still on the ground but the rest of my body is being carried away by the plane. It sounds gross, but I absolutely love it.

My entire life has been like a cycle of being in one place and then being transferred to another by an airplane. Like going through puberty, flying must have been something that freaked my parents out at the beginning, but now has just become something that is normal, and still mysterious, bizarre and awesome at the same time. But for me, having been flying regularly for as long as I can remember, airplanes aren't on my list of things that scare me.

I'm not sure exactly what makes me love airports and flying so much. But I think part of it is that I'm just sort of used to it. I'm used to the anxiety and fear of it all, and I think that growing up with it has helped me to push past that, into a realm where I feel at home at an airport, and I feel so excited and happy in a plane that I feel like I'm about to explode.

As a third culture kid, you tend to not associate your "home" with anything specific. 

For me, I feel "homesick" for both Switzerland and Cambodia, depending where I am. I don't know where my "home" is. In fact, "home" seems like a metaphysical word to me, something that I've never experienced or known in my life.

And I think that's another thing that makes me love planes so much. I love the idea of not being in a specific place. I love the thought that, when I'm in a plane, I'm not in Switzerland, or Cambodia, or anywhere else for that matter.

I'm just in a plane, thousands of meters above sea level, in no particular place. And I love to think that that's how I feel about my home - not being in a particular place, just with particular people, or at a certain time.

Being in a plane helps me to sort of make sense, for a short while, of what my real home is like, right there, above the clouds, not anywhere, but still a thing that I feel in my heart when I'm with my family or friends.

You might not understand. But it's something that I feel, up there, in a plane above the clouds. When I'm in a plane, it doesn't matter what I'm leaving behind or where I'm going, even though that thought does excite me a lot. What matters is that in that moment, I don't have to worry about whether the place I'm in is worthy to be called my home. And I love that.

Airports. Back on track here. Why do I love airports? Well, I love a lot of things about them. I love the little things: the way they can be stress-filled and relaxing to me at the same time, the variety of faces to see, the international environment I'm so addicted to...

But the main thing I love about airport is this:

I love the idea of thousands of people from all around the world coming together in one place. 

My entire life I've grown up in places like that. My school, for instance. We have 32 nationalities total. Ergo, we come from pretty much all around the world. And I love how that is similar too, in an airport. There are thousands of people there, each person with their own story - where they've come from, where they're heading - and they're all coming together in one place, at that airport. And I'm a part of that. It's also fascinating for me to think that they're also only there for a short time, just like my friends and I are only at my school for a short time each day, and about to embark on another journey, each person a different one for themselves, spreading out into different places again, all over the world.

Call me a culture nerd. But hey, that's how I feel. And it totally fascinates me!

So yeah. Airports, airplanes, flying across the world... in only a few days, I'll be doing just that. And I'm really excited, because it's one of the things I love most in the world. And as a "culture princess", I'm so blessed to be able to experience it over and over again.