Faith Abroad & Home

A lesson or two from attending mosques internationally & home When I was breaking my fast at home the other day, my parents were urging my brothers and me to perform our terawikh prayers. At first I was reluctant to go as I have already performed the terawikh prayers every single night prior to that

My First Day at Schools (Part II)

In the previous post I wrote about the first half of my educational life starting from Thailand, to Pakistan, and to Singapore. This week I continue with my next destination after Singapore. Adapting quickly After three and a half years of living in Singapore, I had to rejoin my family who were in Taiwan. Taiwan, a

My First Day at Schools (Part I)

The day that I arrived into my first lecture in UBD (Universiti Brunei Darussalam), I felt like a fish out of water. Having arrived almost two months after UBD opened, I am reminded of the other schools that I’ve gone to and how it felt walking into a classroom with a sea of faces I’ve seen for the first time. Ever since I was seven, I’ve always arrived late to my new schools. Whether it would be a couple of days or months, the feeling was always the same.

First I would walk into the class after being guided by the headmaster, principal, teacher or supervisor that just happened to be free. As the door opened, my knees started to tremble as the sight of the other pupils in class were busy doing their work or playing around. Then I would be introduced to the class, which was a dreadful feeling as the attention of the class would suddenly and abruptly be focused on me. I started to drown in a sea of mixed emotions; loneliness, nervousness, and shock as I began to stutter my name.

Speaking of names, my name was always the hardest to pronounce by all of my teachers. They would come up with so many different versions of my name, even “Alfalfa”! But in the end, I would just tell them to call me “Azz”.

As all my schools I attended were international schools, except for two local schools that I attended temporarily, English was the spoken language within the schools. You would think that within the first few days I would start to get to know my classmates, but as always I would sit on a table that would be furthest from anyone else, have lunch in a secluded area or just sit outside alone during recess. It’s not that I didn’t want to get to know my classmates, it’s just that with everything happening so fast and me trying to soak everything new in, I really needed a bit of time and space to realise that this is the beginning of a new life.

From Thailand to Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, the U.K., and Brunei, I have made friends from all races and faiths in so many different schools. Which make me wonder, why has it been a hard experience to move from one school to another?

If I’m home, why doesn’t it feel like it?

Third Culture Kids (TCK) is a phenomenon that happens to children when they are brought up in another country other than their country of origin stated in their passport. It isn’t like a child that has been brought up in neighborly Malaysia for his or her whole life and is suddenly brought over to Brunei