I travelled from the United Kingdom (UK) right down to ARGENTINA to live there for nine months and I've been living "down here" for about five months now.
I'll go into my reasons for doing this in detail another time...
When on skype with a friend from the UK earlier today, one of the first things he asked me was how homesick I was feeling (or not) and if I was feeling any better. I was a little surprised. We hadn't spoken for an entire week so I couldn't remember whether I'd confided in him about this at all.
But over the "Christmas Week" I had started to get a real bout of the ole homesickness. It had finally really hit me. I'm doing better now though. I don't feel it as much.
The thing is, since getting here, I've missed my friends a lot. That is due to the language barrier, not having anyone around me that I have known my whole life and suddenly living and working with a completely new group of people who aren't from my original country or culture. All of this has an impact on you-positive, negative or both.
But in comparison with a lot of people I know who are living and working in other countries, I'm doing okay. Not brilliant, but I haven't been plane-ticket shopping on the Internet yet either.
My advice? NEVER contemplate how far away you are. I just choose not to dwell on that. I don't stare at a map of the world and go "ohhh...". I'll look at a map, I haven't banned Atlases since getting here, but when friends ask on skype, I tell them I'm not thinking about the distance and as a result I've found they don't mention the specific distance. That helps a lot.
They'll be certain people, perhaps groups of people, that you really miss. They'll be some that even though it may surprise people in your new country, you barely miss or don't miss at all. Whatever your reasons for that are, don't feel guilty for missing some people more than others. Seriously, depending on your individual situation of course, worrying over that isn't going to make you miss someone more.
No matter who we are or what country we came from, when we go away to another place, we have a tendency to look back on our old life, town/city, job, friends, situations and attitudes surrounding us and think: "ahhh, well...maybe it wasn't that bad." It gets to the point where you remember the freezing winter in your old home, how much you loathed it and wished to escape and your new response in your new, warm, country is: "well the brisk air was always refreshing at 7am in the morning."
This will happen to you.
To use an English term, we look at it "through rose-tinted glasses." We skim over what we didn't like. We reminisce over something that we didn't think about before and all of a sudden-we love it! Call it new positive thinking or a disillusionment fueled by a small dose of illness for the homeland, you didn't want to go for a morning run in the buckets of rain before you left, did you?
I'll go into our tendency to do this, with a few more example of my experience of this, in another post!
I'll also mention homesickness again, because it's not just going to hit one time only. For now, following the good advice of friends who have and have not been there and done that; I try to keep reminding myself WHY I'M HERE. Living out of your original town, a brand new job, out of your original country, we all have our reasons for doing this. For me, "it felt like a good idea at the time" is a completely justifiable reason! It is my genuine reason for doing many things all the time! This time though, I have a somewhat deeper reason for living and working in another country. And for me this reason is so strong and powerful and convicting, that no matter what keeps happening and how I'm feeling, it's keeping my feet firmly planted where I am. I'm sticking this out.
Your reason is also what GIVES YOU THE JOY OF BEING WHERE YOU ARE! DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING!
As a result of this, I'm still having moments, after five months, where it hits me for a second and I think "wow, I live here!"
Hope this helps! (By the way, I'm not ACTUALLY a Doctor, but thanks for reading and I hope this managed to help you anyway!)
