The student-led Global Student Association at the American School of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is a mix of Third Culture Kids (TCKs), cross-border citizens and cultural nomads. Some of them have penned glimpses into their lived experiences and reflected on identity, belonging and displacement. As global citizens, they’ve grown up navigating the space between countries, customs and selves. This four-part series highlights youth perspectives at a time when cross-cultural empathy has never been more crucial. We start with the stories of Nada Sidahmed and Junyi Hu.
Nada Sidahmed on ‘Between Bills and Borders’
(Born and raised in the United States, both of Nada Sidahmed’s parents are ethnically Sudanese. She and her family moved from Houston, Texas, U.S.A. to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.)
“That’ll be seven dollars and ninety eight cents,” says the curly haired barista standing before me.
On cue, my hand reaches for my wallet. A wallet I’ve owned since the fifth grade, whose thick, white leather exterior, adorned with vibrant flowers and illegible cursive handwriting, was now ultimately both faded and battered. Whose stitching was now coming undone indicating the near end of its lifespan. My fingers worked at a practiced rate at the clasp until it came fully unfastened.
Staring back at me was an array of different-colored notes of varying sizes. My fingers initially brush past the familiar texture of the dollar bill but nestled beside it were notes of different weights and colors, each carrying a story of their own. The soft, almost flimsy feel of the Sudanese pound, a reminder of family visits and the scent of spiced tea and freshly baked cookies in my grandmother’s courtyard. The sleek, slightly glossy surface of the Brazilian real, the newest addition to my collection, symbolizes a life I never at all expected to build.
Three currencies, three versions of myself.
And yet, in moments like these, I wonder — am I spending more than just money? Am I exchanging pieces of who I am depending on where it is I stand?
The Sudanese pound, thin and delicate, feels almost out of place here. It rarely ever gets used, yet I keep it tucked away, both a quiet and subtle reminder of where I come from.
I remember it being a smoldering summer’s day when my grandmother first offered to take me along with her to the notorious “Souq Omdurman” or in other words, Omdurman Market.
The streets pulsed with life upon entry. Voices layered over one another in rapid Arabic, bargaining, greeting, teasing. The air smelled strongly of spices and exhaust smoke. I understood what was being said but still felt ever-so-slightly out of tune with my surroundings.
My grandmother on the other hand moved with purpose, greeting shopkeepers by name, scoffing at a price here and there, slipping between stalls like she had done this everyday of her life, and on second thought, she very likely did.
It was somewhere between a stall selling henna and another overflowing with printed tobes that she turned to me and pressed a note into my palm.
“Just in case,” she said with a smile.
That note wasn’t just money. It was proof that I belonged there even if I didn’t always feel like I did.
Holding onto it now, years later, it feels like I’m preserving a thread between my ethnicity and myself, something that connects me not just to a place, but to a people and a history.
The presence of the U.S. dollar in contrast is undeniable. It’s the currency I’ve spent the most, seen the most and ultimately questioned the least. The U.S. dollar has always felt like the default; growing up in Houston, it was the only currency that mattered. I’d stuff it neatly into the corners of my backpack, ready for after-school bake sales or gradually save it up for something I really wanted.
It wasn’t just money; it was a tool I learned to use early, instinctively. Unlike the Sudanese pound, which felt almost sacred and symbolic, the dollar bill was practical and transactional. There was no ceremony to it, no pause. It simply navigated, whether through hands, corner stores or wallets. But its constant presence shaped more than my spending habits. It quietly sculpted how I viewed normalcy.
U.S. culture wasn’t something I consciously adopted but rather something I absorbed without intention, maybe simply because I was born into it. The dollar didn’t just buy things, it made everything feel more ordinary, more expected. It was the currency of everyday life, the standard way of moving through the world. I didn’t have to think twice when I used it.
That said, I’m not sure I ever truly felt “American” — at least not fully. Not everything on the surface said I belonged, and that’s alright. There was always a part of me outside of it, quietly observing, quietly different.
As much as I’ve lived with the dollar, it’s the Real that’s become my new reality. Every time I hold a coin or bill of the Brazilian currency, I am reminded that I’ve spent nearly two years here now, building a new routine to life in this country — one that still feels unfamiliar, and yet is deeply connected to me.
I moved to Brazil because of my father’s job, which meant that everything in my life shifted. I went from the familiar relative calm of Houston to a new bustling city, a different language and a culture that sometimes feels like a puzzle I am still figuring out. The Real though, is something I can hold in my hand as a daily reminder of this transition.
It’s funny — I never imagined that something as simple as money could reflect such a personal change, but here I am, navigating both the literal and figurative exchange of currency as I continue settling into this “new” life.
Junyi Hu on ‘The Cost of Belonging’
(Born in China of Chinese parents, Junyi Hu’s family moved to Brazil when she was in the 6th grade.)
Belonging comes at a price.
Sometimes, it’s small — picking up new habits, adjusting the way you speak, learning to blend in. Other times, it’s much bigger — feeling like you are made up of others’ identities, unsure of where home really is.
When I moved to Brazil at age 11, I had no idea what race and identity meant. Growing up in a country where foreigners are considered rare, I didn’t have a full grasp of what was really going on in an international school.
Then I stepped into a world where I was the only person of color in my grade for three years. I never particularly thought about being different at first. But recalling those experiences a few years later, I realized that I studied in a place where there were no other Chinese students, no familiar faces and no shared experiences.
It was when I went back to China for the first time after three years of pandemic lockdown in Brazil where it became apparent:
“You look like a foreigner”… “Can you even write Chinese like before?” … “I bet you forgot everything about China.”
A sea of, perhaps out of curiosity, questions about my experience rushed through every conversation I had with my friends, my relatives and my classmates.
I panicked.
Why are they treating me as if I don’t belong here, in China, anymore? Do they see me as a foreigner? Am I an outsider in my own hometown?
Do I still belong here?
What if I don’t belong?
Puzzled, I started to think about ways to “fit” myself in … doesn’t matter where. At least I have to fit in somewhere, right?
I tried, really. Adapted to cultures that weren’t mine and did everything to fit in. But no matter how much I tried, I remained different — too Chinese to be Brazilian, too Brazilian to feel at home in China.
Caught between cultures and languages
I wasn’t just caught between cultures — I was caught between languages, between versions of myself.
In Brazil, I spoke Portuguese hesitantly, always aware that it wasn’t mine. With my family, I spoke Chinese, but after years abroad, it no longer came as naturally as it once had. In school, I spoke English, the language I had mastered but one that still felt borrowed, something I had adopted rather than inherited.
Language was supposed to anchor identity, but for me, it only reinforced the feeling that I was floating somewhere in between.
For a long time, I hesitated before every sentence, afraid of sounding wrong, of revealing just how foreign I really was. I stayed quiet, blending into the background, observing rather than engaging so then I wouldn’t be seen as an “outsider.”
I thought if I just listened hard enough, if I mirrored my classmates well enough, I would eventually feel like I belonged.
But belonging doesn’t work that way.
It isn’t something you unlock by perfecting an accent or memorizing the right cultural references.
It’s more complicated than that.
For a long time, I thought the key to belonging was assimilation: If I could just do what my classmates did — laugh at the same jokes, celebrate the same holidays, talk like them — maybe I would stop feeling like an outsider. I copied their moves, nodded along to conversations I didn’t fully understand, learned to laugh at jokes I didn’t find funny. I tried to shrink the parts of me that were too different, too foreign. But the harder I tried to fit in, the more I felt like I was losing myself.
But over time, I started to see things differently: Maybe belonging wasn’t about fitting neatly into one place. Maybe it wasn’t something I had to chase or prove.
Instead, I began to see my in-between space as an advantage. I can move between cultures, understand people in ways that others can’t and bring different perspectives into every space I enter. Being in between means I can connect with multiple worlds, even if I never fully belong to any one of them.
This realization didn’t happen overnight, though.
It came in small moments — when I helped my classmates understand a piece of Chinese culture, when I translated something effortlessly between languages, when I found common ground with someone from a completely different background.
It was in these moments that I saw belonging in a new light. It wasn’t about erasing differences; it was about embracing them.
And then, I felt free — the freedom in not belonging entirely to one place; the freedom of feeling at home in many; the freedom of being Chinese and Brazilian and international all at once, without having to choose one identity over the other, without having to squeeze myself into one frame. I can relate to people beyond borders, finding pieces of myself in the most unexpected places.
The cost of belonging is real, but so is the reward. While trying to fit in, I didn’t lose myself; rather, I discovered a version of me that is fluid, adaptable and open to the entire world.
And maybe that is a kind of belonging, too.
