How to Deal with Homesickness When Living Abroad

Anyone living abroad with homesickness knows this familiar story:

You couldn’t wait to leave the country you’ve lived in your entire life and finally start exploring the big world. But now you’re living in that place you’ve always dreamed of living in. While it always seemed so exotic and exciting to you, it’s not as amazing as you thought.

Everyone around you speaks a language you can’t understand, and therefore simple things like going grocery shopping are stressful. You might not know anyone at all, you get culture shock everywhere you turn and you start to realize that you’ve over-romanticized living abroad.

Maybe you’re even regretting leaving the comfort of everything you once knew. You’re homesick, and you kind of want to go back home.

Well, I’m here to tell you not to repack your bags just yet. Here are some tips to overcome your homesickness while living abroad. Hopefully by putting them into practice you’ll start to forget how much you miss home.

1. Utilize the fact that you live in the 21^st century

Back in the day, when you moved abroad it would take weeks or even months to exchange letters with loved ones. Even just a couple decades ago your only option would be to talk a few minutes on the phone. And those few minutes would cost you a fortune.

Heck, even less than ten years ago when I was on the first trip abroad without my parents, the only way I could contact them was through email at hotels, and most hotels charged a heavy fee to use their computers.

But it’s 2019! It’s not so bad anymore!

William Iven / Unsplash

With Whatsapp or Facebook messenger (my personal picks) you can text, call or even video chat your loved ones. You could be seeing your friends, family and even pets back home in real time- and for free! That is, provided you have access to Wi-Fi or, like me, have the T-Mobile international plan with free 3G data.

Sure, the time difference will make it hard to schedule a time to talk sometimes. But you always have the option of calling someone you miss back home at any moment- provided they won’t hate you for waking them up at 3 a.m.

2. Explore your new home

But on the other hand, you shouldn’t be on Skype with people back home during every free moment you have. It’s only going to make you even more homesick in the end.

Talking to your friends and family at home could put a Band-Aid on your homesickness while abroad, but it’s not the cure. The best cure to homesickness is to make the place you just moved to your new home!

Go out for a walk by yourself around your new city or town. Let yourself fall in love with the architecture, language, people and culture surrounding you.

Instead of comparing it to the lack of the things you could find back home, keep your mind open to differences and train your brain to accept a new lifestyle.

Take trips to the most beautiful cities and places in the country or region.

Instead of comparing the new places you are discovering to what you’re used to back at home, compare them to each other. Which city do you like best in your new country, and which country in the region you’re now living in?

Pull your mind away from what was once home and let your thoughts wander through the new discoveries you’re making.

I’m not saying forget about your old home entirely. But if that’s all you’re thinking about all day, then of course you’re going to miss it!

3. Make lots of friends!

Sure, you left a lot of lifelong friends back home when you decided to leave the country, but you can always make new ones. Don’t worry about losing the old ones, because real friendships can always survive a little distance.

At first, it will probably be easiest to meet some fellow expats from your own country so that you won’t have to deal with cultural differences. It’s a great way to ease yourself into your new surroundings if someone similar to you is around to help with the adjustment- particularly if you’re feeling overwhelmed by change.

I wouldn’t suggest only having friends from your home country, though. That completely goes against one of best reasons to move abroad- to meet people different from you! Facebook and Meetup are great places to do this.

Make friends from all over and let them teach you how to look at the world differently, and vice versa. International friendships are the best because they teach us that even though we all come from different cultures, there’s still so many similarities that tie us together! And that sounds so cheesy, but anyone who has experienced this kind of friendship knows that it’s true.

If you want some more advice on how to meet people while living abroad to help deal with homesickness, check out my tips on how to make the most out of living abroad.

4. Bring your old home into your new home

Especially when you first arrive to a new country, it’s hard to imagine it as your home. Everything seems so unfamiliar, but you can make it familiar! In my experience, food makes everything better. The proof of this is the enormous effect familiar food has alleviating your homesickness while abroad.

Cook Familiar Foods 

Cooking foods that you’re used to eating at home is an easy way to bring the comfort of home into your new life.

Kill two birds with one stone: invite people to join, because feeding people is the best way to make friends.

Eat Familiar Foods

You can also find restaurants that sell food from your home country. If you’re American, that won’t be hard to do. You can find American fast food chains in most major cities.

I pretty much never even eat fast food back home. However, if I’m craving some familiar comfort food, or not in the mood to experiment with new foods or to translate a menu on my phone, there’s always a McDonald’s or Subway within reach.

That being said, don’t skip out on experimenting with new foods or putting in extra effort to translate a menu. You never know if you’ll discover your new favorite food.

I think I still can’t pronounce “poffertjes” correctly, but those hot, puffy, mini pancakes are the most delicious Dutch invention. And one of my favorite parts of living in Switzerland was the discovery of my favorite cheese (Gruyère cheese: it’s amazing; try it).

Buy Familiar Foods

Also, research if there are any grocery stores selling food from your country. My parents are from Poland so we’d buy food from the many Polish grocery stores populating the Chicagoland area. I was so excited to find that there was a Polish store in Utrecht after moving there!

It was the most amazing thing to go inside a store and be able to read the labels on all the food products. Such a small thing we take for granted, but reading food labels without using Google translate felt like such a relief.

Sometimes, when I was overwhelmed by all the Dutch around me, it was nice to ride my bike to the store just to be able to hear the familiar Polish language.

Keep Familiar Routines

You can also bring your typical routine with you to the new country so that life doesn’t change too much. This is a great way to minimize you’re homesickness while living abroad.

Did you go for a run every morning? You can still do it! Did you watch Netflix in your free time? You can still do it (but be aware that different countries have TV shows and movies)!

I missed playing the piano when I first moved to the Netherlands, so I bought a used keyboard on Facebook. It didn’t come close in comparison to my beautiful baby grand Yamaha back home, but I was able to record myself playing using the software it came with.

Then I found myself missing my rollerblading routine during the summers back home. Did I mope around wishing I were back home and near the path by my house I used to rollerblade on?

Nope! I hopped onto my laptop and found a pair of rollerblades on sale. A week later I was wearing the brand new rollerblades that arrived at my door and exploring a well-paved country path that was perfect for rollerblading (with beautiful scenery and farm animals to get excited over!).

Miss doing an activity you did with friends, like working out, going shopping or going out for dinner and drinks? The find a group of people who also want to do this activity. Try finding or creating a group on Meetup.com, or ask if there’s anyone interested in a Facebook expat group.

Sure, you can’t bring all of your old activities over with you (for example, the Netherlands doesn’t have mountains, so I had to go elsewhere to get my skiing in). But whatever you’re missing you can fill with new activities that are popular in the country!

Which brings me to…

5. Try new things!

When you’re missing the familiarity of home, I know that trying something new sounds like the worst kind of torture.

But give it a shot!

Learn the language of the country, try new foods and join in on the activities the locals partake in.

I was never a huge biking fan (I always preferred walking or rollerblading), but it soon became my favorite thing about living in the Netherlands. Especially since you could bike home drunk at 3 a.m. while drinking a can of beer and the police wouldn’t even bat an eye.

You may have just moved somewhere by the sea and decide to give surfing a try, learning that you’re really good at it! Or you may have moved near mountains, where you can learn how to ski. Or snowboard, I guess, but skiing is way better in my opinion 😉

You never know if you won’t learn something about yourself and find a new hobby or passion that you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. You’ll soon be having so much fun that you won’t even realize that you’re homesick!

I guarantee, when you’re leaving the country you moved to, you’ll start missing the things that you could only do there. That’s usually the food for me. (…Btw, when American restaurants advertise having Belgian waffles or fries, they’re nothing close to real Belgian waffles or fries 😐 I think someone should do something about that.)

So even though you may be feeling homesick when you first move to a new country, by the time you have to leave you’ll be feeling homesick for that country itself.

 Goran Horvat / Pixabay

I hope these tips will help anyone with homesickness while living abroad and doesn’t knowing how to overcome it.

Remember, it’s all about your mindset. You have to make the decision that you’re no longer going to feel homesickness and become proactive about making changes to your new life abroad.

Yes, you might never manage to stop missing home. But you can decide to start enjoying your new life so much that you won’t mind missing home anymore. Like everything in life, you can’t sit around doing nothing and hoping that you’ll stop feeling the way you’re feeling.

Go out into the world and make your life what you want it be 🙂 It’s cheesy, but it works.