The question of \u201cus\u201d or \u201cthem\u201d is pretty much a constant. It doesn\u2019t change. It\u2019s the answer that changes. Take me for example, I\u2019ve lived in three countries, studied in two and had to deal with adjusting to a different daily repeatedly -as gruelling as it sounds getting used to doing the same thing day in and day out-. I\u2019ve learned that the lines between the \u201cus\u201d and the \u201cthem\u201d are at best blurry. They start existing when we draw them. Of course, that is not to say that all us are the same, when it comes to experiences, temperaments and emotions; I\u2019ll be talking from my point of view: I am a Greek who has worked, travelled and studied across Europe (currently in the Uni of Dundee) and it can be confusing putting myself together in relation to who I am and where I live. And this isn\u2019t an emotion I am experiencing alone. I\u2019m not just Greek. I won\u2019t be heading back to Greece after I\u2019ve graduated here, and have been away for a while, so I\u2019m technically an ex-pat. Do I need Greece or Greek culture to feel Greek? No, not really. I am nostalgic of it, without a doubt. But living abroad with other people who are living abroad, a migrant among other migrants, you have to face reality: how do you acclimate in this everyday life? The way I see it in myself, and others out here and out there, there are two overt sides. Firstly, people who are trying to mover their home country here, bit by it. By listening mostly to their music, by eating their cuisine and forming a circle of people who in the majority are coming from a similar cultural background as they. They want to reminisce and recollect. Then there is the other side: people who are trying to \u201ctranslate\u201d their culture to the terms of their new reality. I belong to that second branch and I think the best way to contextualise it, is that my Greekness doesn\u2019t define me, but I define my Greekness. Once outside one\u2019s home country, everything will feel slightly out of touch and out of synch. The ideal for us and them, and everyone would be to find a middle ground between these two sides. There is no right or wrong in the fact that your culture, mine, everyone\u2019s, are interacting with each other, the way we are right now, by having some kind of contact. Knowing where you come from, knowing who you are is a meaningful and wholesome experience. So is realising how interconnected and intertwined most cultures are: through language, food, humour, the Internet and memes, this is what makes us sit around and talk to someone to realise that we have so much more in common than we would have ever thought. It\u2019s not simple, defining who you are with respect to others (people from your own cultural background, people you have just come across or will do). It\u2019s like trying to figure who you are today. You have to do it in relation to whom you were yesterday (someone you hopefully know) and to whom you will be tomorrow (someone you don\u2019t know yet). It\u2019s different for everyone going through this but buoyantly we can all find some other people to assist us in defining part of ourselves.<\/p>\n
\u00a0By Thanos Kyratzis<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The lines between us and them are at best blurry <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[22,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-comment"],"yoast_head":"\n