I’m an anthropologist by training, so I admit this is kind of a weird one, but the question yet BURNS: Do you, or someone you know, have a spouse from a foreign country? If so, how did you meet them?
My friend lived in the USA until he met a Norwegian woman online. He visited, and eventually they got married; now he lives in Norway with her.
All well and good; but is that how it usually happens? Or is it usually through student exchange programs? Perhaps it’s through tourism and sight-seeing? Maybe living in the country for a while, to get a more “worldly” take on things, and you find Mr or Ms right in the frozen veggies aisle.
I’m mostly interested in where such meetings happen (maybe international airports are happenin’ places), if it involves certain “types” of people (younger, college-age people looking to experience other cultures), and if it’s more common now than it was, say, 20 years ago.
And just a note, by “foreign”, I mean someone from farther than next door, so to speak - it’s not a huge mystery how one in the US would meet a Mexican or Canadian national, or a French meeting a German, etc. But how might a Japanese person meet an Italian, or an Iranian meeting a Croatian?
I am Korean, my boyfriend is Irish. We were both working for the same English academy in Seoul when we met. I was 26, he was 29. We will probably be getting married within the next year or so.
He was in Korea to earn some money to pay off his student loans - pretty common nowadays for a lot of college grads from the West. Originally he was working in China but then the SARS thing happened so he switched over to Korea instead.
I was visiting San Andres, Colombia for a scuba diving vacation. She was working in a gift shop near the hotel.
I recognized her in a nearby bar after she got off work. Had to go back to the shop and buy a translation dictionary to remind myself of enough Spanish so I could try to have a conversation with her. She took pitty and put up with me. 7 years now.
I’m Canadian and my wife is Chinese, but she had already become a Canadian citizen by the time I met her so I don’t know if that counts. We were set up by mutual friends (her former classmate knew my former classmate).
Friends of my wife’s parents in Memphis, TN. The husband is a native Memphian, and the wife is native Swedish. She was the head of her Elvis Presley fan club in Stockholm, and they met at an event at Graceland.
I’m a British citizen, but I’m married to an American. I’ve lived in the US for 14 years, though, so it’s not like it should be a great surprise. We met at a frat party.
Our ex-roommate met a lovely aussi guy online [chatroom about babylon 5 if I remember correctly] and they got married and she and her son emigrated to Perth back in 1999. He made 2 visits here in the 2 years they ‘dated’ online, and there were a lot of phone calls.
There are lots of foreign folks who come to the USA to go to college. It’s not an “exchange” program like high school exchange students, but they are here on a student visa. That provides lots of opportunities for American students to meet foreign folks.
I’m an American living in America, married to a Japanese woman. She came here as a high school exchange student 20+ years ago, and hung around ever since; I met her when she was a grad student, and a coworker of mine who knew her when she was an undergrad introduced us.
My first husband was American. My current guy (the improved model) is English. I met them both online but they were both already living here - the ex moved here as a teen with his Australian mother when her marriage failed, and my other half moved here after falling in love with the country on vacation.
Both of my brothers married non-Americans, one a Peruvian that he met on the internet, and the other a South Korean that he met at university (in the US).
