…When I came back first, I never had a bank account, I never had an insurance, it’s so important in Germany to have so many insurances; and I came back … and I came back and, I was trying to do some things and people sort of look at me, and they had the feeling that … I was German, but I didn’t understand things. And to me, that made me feel really foreign. … I felt so misunderstood.

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I love the way this distance made me love my roots again and they really kept me connected. I want to take this rich history, this ancient culture in order to move forward.

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... I recorded myself sometimes when ... speaking different languages in different settings. And I was surprised to see that you can really tell when the switch happens because the intonation is different. My voice is different, my gesticulation changes - everything. ... After a while I can feel really that my whole kind of thinking also changes. It shifts and it focuses on other things.

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We use so many words that are so specific to our work ... This is something we [at UNHCR] work very hard in doing so .... We not only give workshops, but we are also trying to approach so we simplify our language, but we also try to explain many of our terms. It's a matter of working on it, acknowledging it and building bridges. 

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"One of my first memories was ... I was wrapped up in a giant snow suit for the first time in my life feeling really uncomfortable, this little child enveloped in layers of snow pants and giant boots and coming from Italy I was like 'What is this?' ... It was a shock ... and the switch from speaking Italian to speaking English happened within a few days".

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I think the last thing you learn on a very high level, is to do humor and to joke. ... I found that very hard when I moved to Sweden when I was 19, that people would think that I'm stupid. When I was joking, but also when it was about emotional things, when you wanted to be very very precise with something and couldn't really be so precise, that was very frustrating to me. 

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There are always these external forces ... that send a message to you that you are not Armenian enough, or you're not American. I think you don't truly feel like you belong because there is always others who send you these very strong messages that you don't belong.

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"Switzerland has four official languages … the reward of learning a language was so clear fro the beginning… you learn that you can communicate with people if you learn to speak their language. It is more fun if you speak other people’s languages."

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"I can’t be 100% Mexican and I can’t be 100% Americana, and that’s OK. Maybe I’m also a mix of other cultures that I admire and that’s OK as well. I’m a blend of things".

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If you want to tell your story email me at elisabethajtay.at.gmail.com!
Sound by Hernán Giorcelli
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“…The first one or two years when I was back in Korea they said … ‘your Korean sounds so interesting, because it is Korean but it sounds like a translated English novel.’”. Some people make fun of it … like mimicing or something. That was embarrassing but at the same time it was like OK, people laughed and we had a fun time together.”

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If you want to tell your story email me at elisabethajtay.at.gmail.com!
Sound by Hernán Giorcelli
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