What is it like being an international living abroad!?!
For starters- a lot of adjusting to salads…
Every time someone finds out that I left my home country at 17 to study abroad, they say “I can’t imagine what its like being sooo far away from home!”…WELL, you simply can’t! You literally cannot imagine what leaving your home country feels like, let alone getting acculturated into a new country. Whether one moves to somewhere in Europe, Americas, Asia, Africa or Oceania the magnitude of adjustment is simply hard to articulate! BUT in order to better educate the one that’s never left beyond their home ground (nothing wrong with this…), I’ve decided to give you the inside scoop on what we internationals go through when living abroad! Here’s hoping you locals get a “better imagination” of what its actually like for us!
Understanding the lingo
This is an interesting as every country has its own way of emulating their emotions and not every term relates to its literal meaning. My roommate in school was Irish and in Ireland when they found something really funny they would say “that was gas” or to denote entertainment or fun, they say “that was a good crack!”. To a foreigner, this literally makes zero sense.
During my first year living abroad, there were several times I had misunderstood what the other person was saying. The first time someone said “How is your day going” to me…I was genuinely startled and quite happy that he was concerned to ask me about my day! Little did I know that, post my spiel about my day, he didn’t REALLY care about how I was doing, and was rather the local way of greeting a stranger instead of a hello. Point here is that the first step to fitting in is understanding the local lingo, otherwise you’re gonna be in a “balls up” situation (British slang for a messed up situation)!
Spellings and measurement systems
This might be only restricted to USA, but can we actually address that the spellings and metric system used here is a serious problem. I remember when I was writing an essay for my Philosophy class, I was SO MAD that Word kept spellchecking “favour” to “favor”… I was genuinely doubting myself and my spellings! To further add to the level of frustration was when I had to buy a water bottle. Fluid Ounces? Like really? A “LITRE” (go figure!) is 33.814 ounces.. that’s not even a whole number! And what’s with the pounds, yards, inches, miles and DATE FORMATS! MM/DD/YYYY was never a thing until I moved to the Americas! AND don’t even get me started about the Fahrenheit vs Celsius. I still haven’t managed to understand Fahrenheit and I will forever refuse to.
Essentially, this is an integral part of making an internationals life harder than it already is!
FOOD
I’ll have to admit, when your day to day food growing up isn’t just pizza, fries or go forbid SALADS (ughhh), food becomes a serious problem once you move abroad. To be fair, eating all of this was GREAT at the start! Then I moved to foods that were “closer” to tasting more flavorful (what home food tastes like).. Thai, Asian food and then to Mexican food and then reluctantly going to that one or two under average Indian restaurants (that I would’ve NEVER gone to if I were back home), because the pain of missing home surpassed eating sub par Indian food. The only way I could stay “connected” to my roots was this! A part of moving is assimilation, but since food is so centric in our culture, no amount of guac or salad you put in front of me would do justice to the taste of home cooked rice, lentils and curry.
Finding your community
It took me until junior year to feel settled with my group of friends and truly be comfortable being myself in front of them. Why so long you ask? I don’t know! But you can’t force it for sure. Because you’re so far away from home, you want to make sure you’re with people who genuinely vibe with you and vice versa. You’re also trying to find yourself the first couple of years, so I don’t blame you if people find you a weirdo. You are outside your comfort zone and you have your reservations. The number of people I knew that went back to their original homes post freshmen year of college, because they couldn’t fit in, was ridiculously high! It makes sense though. If you struggle to connect with someone, living abroad can be DAUNTING. BUT if and when you find your clique of weirdos that love and appreciate you- I bet you its a freaking treat EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Transitional struggles
This is a redundant problem that will never stop with each cycle. Uprooting your home to move somewhere else to start anew is no joke. You see this “free” and independent life in front of you in a new country and you want to experiment with EVERYTHING- food, drinks,parties and things that were so foreign to you back home but right now are at your disposal! You meet people, you make new friends with fresh thoughts that are quite refreshing as opposed to what you were taught back home! You find yourself opening up a new lens and refining (maybe even changing) your opinions, values and ways of life but all of a sudden, you realize the communication struggle between your family back home and this new you who they don’t recognize! And as you continue to play an emotional tug-of-war between your new friends and old and with your new life and old, the one real struggle that still persists is to not forget the core that built you, while you remind yourself to keep adapting to your surrounding.
I could go on and on about everything that we go through, but the one thing you should know is that we have maturity levels of Master Shifu! Learning to be independent in a place that is not your home when you are SO far away from home feels like a bloody never ending marathon…BUT the fruit that comes out of this is a more resilient and unfazed human ready to take on ANYTHING… No seriously, I’m OK with eating Salads now (Can’t guarantee I’ll have a smile on my face after, but you learn to deal with it!) ;)
