Every person living abroad goes through homesickness at some point, whether it's after the first day or after five months. The homesickness can come from loneliness, culture shock, missing family and friends, language barriers, changes in access to staple products and services, etc. It’s a completely normal feeling and to be expected. I had both good and bad days while living in Spain. In all honesty, I sometimes had random mood swings where I went from being completely fine to crying in a bathroom in a matter of 10 minutes. Living abroad can be hard. But the most important thing to remember is to be patient and give yourself grace. Take it one day at a time.
Anybody that knows me knows that I am super family-oriented. I talk to them almost every day, I look forward to every holiday that gives me an excuse to go home, and I’m even looking to get a work transfer so that I can be closer to them. I went to college in a different state so being away for months at a time was not abnormal to me. But moving 4,000 miles away from them was big. Living in Spain made me feel like I was truly on my own because my family was no longer a drive away. Thankfully, we live in the age of technology so I wasn’t completely alone. There was a 6 hour time difference between where I lived in Spain and my home in Atlanta so connecting virtually could be difficult at times. However, talking with my family over the phone was really important to me so I came up with a schedule to make it work. I would typically call my family around 3 pm, as soon as I got home from school, which was around 9 pm for them. Or I would call really late at night, between 12 am and 1 am, which was around the time my mom was waking up for work.
Another factor that added to my homesickness is that I am extremely shy. Being a shy person living abroad can get really lonely. It was really hard to meet and build connections with new people. And I lived in a really small village-like area where there was nothing to do, so finding people my age to hang out with wasn’t necessarily an option. Thankfully, my host family was really inviting and included me in a lot of their day-to-day plans. Through them, I got to explore parts of the main city center, meet some of their church friends, watch my host siblings’ soccer games, etc. They even took me on a day trip to Segovia and Avila, a small tourist city about an hour away from their house. Being part of a teach abroad program was also a HUGE benefit. There were about 20 participants in my teach abroad program all throughout the region of Castille y Leon. We met at orientation at the beginning of our program and added each other on Snapchat and Whatsapp. I began to build relationships with the other participants because we were all going through similar experiences. We would talk about our schools, host families, give advice, ask questions, and vent about the things we were experiencing. I met up with two of the girls who were working in a city near me a few times on the weekends for tapas and to explore. I even traveled to other cities and countries with a few. It was always a huge relief to be able to connect with other Americans who spoke English, understood what I was going through, and were able to make the hard days easier.
Missing the normalcy of your everyday life and everyday routine can also make living abroad feel difficult. During my time in Spain, I was journaling regularly and one of my entries was literally a list of random things I missed about life back home. Of course, I mentioned missing family and friends, being around other English speakers, and living in a bigger city. But I also noticed how much I missed smaller things like American breakfast, Hot Cheetos, washcloths, natural hair products, my car, and knowing the songs on the radio. Living abroad can mean no longer having a lot of the more simple aspects of your life that you may have previously taken for granted. I literally went from store to store searching for a set of washcloths but didn’t find any. My family didn’t even quite know what I was referring to when I asked them. I went to Spain with box braids but when it was time to take them out, the stores near me literally had one option for a comb. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day so getting one small croissant was not it! I could go down a whole list of things that I missed having easy access to in America but I won’t do that. The moral of the story, those small changes sometimes made the transition harder. It took a lot of getting used to.
While you don’t need to be fluent in Spanish to participate in the teach abroad program I did, I would definitely recommend practicing from the moment you decide to apply. It’s not necessary while teaching because you are supposed to be speaking English as much as possible. However, interacting outside of the classroom was difficult and led to me feeling lost sometimes. While I could interact with my host mom, my school coordinator, and a handful of other people during my time abroad, I also spent a good amount of time sitting quietly while everybody around me spoke in Spanish to each other and I couldn’t understand it at all. There were plenty of days where I sat in the teachers' lounge eating my lunch quietly instead of engaging because I didn’t know what anybody was saying. I would sometimes zone out during dinner while my host parents spoke to their children. And I went to three birthday parties but only consistently talked to my host mom because she was the only bilingual person there. Being the only English speaker in a room became very overwhelming at times. Trying to process all of the noise that was going on around me, picking out the few words I knew to try to gauge what's being discussed, and racking my brain to string together sentences in response can be mentally exhausting at times. I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself quiet on a normal day back home but I was definitely much quieter and more reserved abroad because the language barrier was sometimes hard to work around.
The last and probably the biggest factor that contributed to my homesickness was constantly feeling like the odd man out. As a Black person living in Valladolid, my skin color already made me stand out. In fact, I literally saw only three other Black people (one of my students, her mom, and one random guy walking by while we were driving in my city) the whole time I was living with my host family. So I got A LOT of stares everywhere we went and people weren’t even discreet about it. And then the added factor of me being the only English-speaking foreigner in a group of Spanish-speaking locals made fitting in even harder. The first time I went to my host family’s church, I saw a group of teenagers staring at me while whispering among themselves. Especially as a person who does not like having all eyes on me and being the center of attention, being the only stranger, foreigner, English speaker, and Black person in every room felt super isolating. The feeling was very uncomfortable and stressful and it even led to me crying a few times. I recall feeling my eyes tear up after seeing those teenagers whispering about me and walking to the church bathroom to try to calm down. My host mom came to check on me to see how she could help but I ended up staying in the bathroom for the full church service crying. I also recall randomly crying during a Sunday lunch with my host dad’s parents and there didn’t even seem to be a specific trigger. I was just sitting on the couch playing Candy Crush and ended up crying. That feeling of isolation and loneliness can be really overwhelming at times and at some point, I noticed myself becoming more and more of a recluse. Feeling alone in a room full of people made me feel worse so I took on a mentality of “if I’m gonna feel alone, I might as well actually be alone.” I wish I wouldn’t have done that because I'm sure it didn’t make anything better in the long run. But hey, you live and you learn.
Now, this isn’t meant to scare you or discourage you from moving abroad (in fact, I’m looking to hopefully do another short-term program) but rather to share my experience with homesickness. If you are going through any of these right now, it's important to remember that this is normal and that you are not alone. We all experience homesickness in some way, shape, or form. And if you are planning to move abroad in the future, this may be the perfect time to start thinking about ways you can potentially combat these feelings to make your experience a bit easier. The best way to handle homesickness is to come up with some healthy coping mechanisms. That could include journaling, going for walks, exploring more of your area, joining Facebook groups to meet people, creating a comparable routine to what you do back home, etc. Just don’t let being homesick ruin your entire experience because living abroad is truly wonderful!
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Hope this served as your sign to step outside of your comfort zone and teach abroad! I thoroughly enjoyed my experience! And if that wasn't enough, I also have a referral link that will save you an extra $200! (I wish I would've had one of these before my trip, $700 to cover housing, meals, placement assistance, etc. while living abroad for 3 months is honestly a steal! That would normally only cover 1 week in a hotel lol.)
And of course, there's no hiding that there is a benefit for me too if you use my referral link because if you get $200, I also get $200. Win-win lol. However, I'm not in it for the money. I genuinely did enjoy my experience and would recommend it a thousand times!
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