In today’s blog post, I’ll talk about some of the challenges that I’ve faced while living abroad, with some advice for you to have in mind if planning to start your own adventure, I hope you enjoy today’s reading.

Loneliness and homesickness

When you get to a country where you don’t know anyone, the first weeks are quite a challenge. Nobody to hang out, to talk nor to have dinner/lunch. I had the luck of meeting a very outgoing guy who introduced me to his friends, but I also started hanging out with certain kind of people that were all about partying, people that I couldn’t build a true friendship with and that they didn’t add much value to my life either. They were the kind of people that got drunk and leave the place without paying, not once, not twice but many other times, even on my birthday once and I had to pay a huge bill because I wasn’t going to be like them, I don’t know if you guys know this but if you leave without paying, the ones that most likely pay it, are the waitress or waiter on duty, not the owner, the employees. That angered me a lot, the birthday guy never pays and that time the birthday guy had to pay for it all.

First advice, value quality of friends over the quantity, no matter how lonely you feel. It is better to have one great friend than a group of people that will make you feel uncomfortable and that goes against your principles.

Food

With food, I’ve met people that have 3 different approaches.

The first type of people is the ones that complain about how expensive their homeland food is and how different it tastes. To that kind of people, I want to tell you that…you are not in your country, they don’t have the same ingredients of your homeland and even if they do, most restaurant adapts the dishes to make them more appealing to the general audience. If you have something somewhat similar to the food from your own country, you don’t know how lucky you are, for me, the only Chilean restaurants that have good Chilean food is one hour and a half away from where I live, I can’t go there every day.

The second type of people are the ones that complaints every single day of how bad the food is, but they don’t even try to cook to make better food. I’m lucky enough that I’m not a picky eater and that I can cook some dishes and that I have my sister living with me that can cook way more stuff than me.

The third kind of people, I’m this type, is that they like to try new types of food, I learned to love middle eastern, Greek and Turkish food among others and everywhere that I travel I know that they’ll have at least one good Italian restaurant or pizza place which are two of my favourite food.

Second advice, don’t be picky. Try the local cuisine and if you are lucky enough to be in a multicultural city like Toronto try the food of as many countries as you can, as mentioned above it may not be as real as the one from the country of origin, but you’ll find and experience flavours that you’ll never try before in your life, maybe your new favourite food is around the corner and you haven’t realized yet.

Family

Being far from your loved ones is always hard, but in the bright side, it makes you cherish the moments that you have with them when you meet them. You start fighting less for silly things and enjoying more every single laugh and you start to be more present than ever.

If you get some good friends around you when living abroad, they’ll become your family, I always feel like when you get some good friends when living alone, you can acquire deeper friendships since you are all in the same boat, you support one another that’s why I recommend picking your friends carefully.

Third advice, pick your friends carefully and whenever you go back home to spend time with your family, cherish every moment since those happy moments, are the ones that will help you move forward in your goals.

Culture

This depends on where you are living and where you come from. If you immigrate to a country with a similar culture than yours, this won’t be a challenge at all, but if you immigrate to a place with totally different culture or cultures, keep in mind that you are the one coming in, you are the one that has to adapt to their standards, not the other way around.

You’ll be surprised but many people feel that they can enforce their culture and belief in others.

As you guys know, I live in a multicultural city so, there are many visible cultures coexisting with each other. I’ve taken some positive aspects of other cultures and added them to my own. You’ll also be surprised how many cultures similarities you could have with many countries, sometimes they are not visible but when you get to know more people you’ll find more and more similarities.

Forth advice, don’t reject people’s culture while enforcing yours, embrace the different cultures, I’m sure you’ll get something positive to your life in return 🙂

This may vary depending on where you are but, it is important that you find your place in the city. With this I mean to fall in love of the city. I felt in love with Toronto quite fast and the more I walk around it the more I like it. I love to visit places like the distillery district which is one of the oldest places in the city, but its surrounding buildings are quite new. There are some art galleries and things like that.

Another place I also like to visit is the Toronto Islands which, to me, is the most peaceful place “in” the city. It’s an island in the downtown of the city, you can see the best view of the skylines of the city. I also love its multiculturalism and all the things you can do in the city.

You need to find your little places to enjoy 🙂

Final thoughts

If you are trying to start the adventure of living abroad have my tips in mind, every path is different but, these tips may come in handy for you. I’m a very lucky man, I pick a city where I fitted right away and I can think of living anywhere but here at the moment, Chile is my homeland but Toronto is my houseland. I hope you pick the right city too.

This is all for today’s post I hope you have a happy New Year’s Eve and a great weekend. If you think that I miss any other tips please let me know in the comments, best regards from Chile and write you next time 🙂