GirlGI | Girl Gone International GirlGI Issue 4 | Page 63

We met in Providence, Rhode Island. We both attended Brown University and have different memories of how we first met. I believe we met through a mutual friend at a house party, his story is at the Graduate Center Bar. We make our binational/cultural relationship work by celebrating the best elements of each of our cultures. We think it helps that both of us had lived abroad before we met, so we were already open to new cultural experiences. The basic ingredient to a bicultural relationship is respecting each other’s backgrounds, traditions or even cultural, let’s say, peculiarities. Living in a country outside of both our cultures is better, I think. We are always on the same side of the river, if you will - which makes things easier. We can both complain to each other about rude Parisian waiters and strange French bureaucratic processes. Then we can work together to find solutions to the problems arising from the ‘third’ country we live in. We complement each other well. But with both of us being foreigners, it takes more time for us to integrate into the society than it would if only one of us was a foreigner. Consequently, our progress in the French language is going terribly slow! Current Location - Paris, France Dimitris, 34 Andrea, 29 Post-doctoral researcher Fundraising consultant Greek Dutch