Returning from abroad can be exciting! ☆ They say that all great things must come to an end, and sadly that even includes adventures abroad. If your time working in a different country is coming to an end, you might have mixed feelings about going home.
Sure, you might be really looking forward to seeing old friends, catching up with family and eating at your favourite food truck. But there’s also that nagging feeling that you might not quite fit in at home again.
Moving back home isn’t as simple as booking a plane ticket and waving goodbye to your adopted home country. It can take quite a bit of time and work to reintegrate back into your home town, community and life, no matter whether you’ve been away for 6 months or 5 years.
But worry not, we have put together nine helpful tips and advice on how to reintegrate after working abroad—because returning home after living abroad should be just another part of the adventure.
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Our best tips for life after working abroad
1. Curb your expectations
Before returning from abroad, it’s important to have realistic expectations of what your life will look like when you’re there. Especially if you’ve been living abroad for many years, you will have to accept that, just as much as you’ve changed through traveling and working abroad, so have your friends and family.
They still love you, but they’ve got their own lives and it would be naive to expect that you’ll just slot right back into life as it was before you left.
People will have had babies, started new jobs, and moved to different cities. Prepare yourself mentally and you’ll be less disappointed when things aren’t the same as they once were.
2. Be proactive with your friendships
Once the initial excitement of being back home has worn off after a few days, you might feel like everyone else is getting on with their lives without you. As much as that may hurt, remember that you were the one who left in the first place.
Your friends have busy lives and they’ve had to make do without you for a long time. But that doesn’t mean they don’t care about you anymore. It just means you’re not as much on their radar as you perhaps used to be.
So be proactive if you want to see them. Call them, text them, invite them out for dinner. Maybe to their favourite new restaurant that they would love to show you. It might take a little while to get back to feeling like you’re part of their lives, but don’t feel sorry for yourself; instead, be the one reaching out and show them how much they still matter to you.
3. Try a new neighborhood
When returning from abroad, look at it as an opportunity to rediscover your hometown with new eyes. It’ll be tempting, and very comfortable, to simply move back into your old neighborhood. But if you’re not returning to your old house or apartment, why not check out a neighborhood you’re less familiar with?
That way, you will have plenty of new cafes, shops and parks to explore. Plus, you’ll be less likely to feel nostalgic by walking past your favourite old hangout spots, or those that aren’t there anymore, every day.
4. Make new friends
At first, you’ll be happy to just catch up with old friends, exchange stories and fill each other in on what’s been missed. But after that novelty has worn off and everyone gets back to their regular lives, it’s possible you’ll feel a little bit lonely. Of course, you’ll miss your friends from your travels and time abroad.
The best way to combat this is to actively make new friends. It can be hard to make friends as an adult, especially in your hometown. But luckily, you’ll probably have picked up some great social skills on your travels.
Join a sports team or book club, go to some meetups on topics that interest you, or join a local charity and support a cause you care about. You’ll meet like-minded people, make new friends and create new memories in your old home.
5. Prepare for culture shock
If you thought the days of culture shock were behind you, we’re sorry to disappoint you. Reverse culture shock is real and it’s totally weird. Even if you’ve only lived abroad for a year or less, many things that were completely normal in the past might feel weird and unfamiliar now that you’ve lived abroad.
Simple things like eating times. Back home, dinner is usually served around 6 or 7 pm. But if you’ve lived in Spain or Italy for a while, you’ll be used to much later dinners and it’ll take your body a while to readjust. Experiencing reverse culture shock in the United States could be a whirlwind! Or maybe you’re returning to Canada after living abroad. Maybe you’ll be jolted back to a world that cares a lot about starting meetings and meet ups on time.
Give yourself time to settle back in and don’t put any pressure on yourself to feel a certain way. These things take time.
6. Stay part of the travel community
After your adventures abroad, things might feel a bit stagnant once you’ve returned home. But who says that just because you’re not abroad any more, you can’t still be part of the international travel community?
Technology makes it really easy to stay in touch with travelers, meet new people and live vicariously through their travels.
Why not join Couchsurfing and host a few travelers on your couch? You’ll make new friends and get to show off your hometown to travelers. You can also join expat communities on Facebook or Meetup.com, or join organizations like InterNations or Girl Gone International.
7. Keep learning the language
Are you worried you’ll lose your new language skills once you get back home? There’s absolutely no need to let your Italian become rusty.
Download apps like Duolingo or Babbel and keep practising your vocabulary and grammar. Or even better, find a local language exchange where you can talk with expats in their native language and help them with their English in return.
You could even find a language buddy who you can meet with once a week. You teach them English they teach you their language. And as an added bonus, you’ll make a new friend along the way.
8. Be a tourist in your hometown
Just because you’re not traveling anymore doesn’t mean you’re not a traveler anymore! If you used to spend your weekends exploring your city abroad, you can continue doing so, even back home.
There are probably dozens of activities and sights a travel guide would recommend in your hometown that you’ve never seen before. Or maybe not since kindergarten.
Buy yourself a little guide book and make a list of all the sights in your hometown and surrounding area that you’ve always wanted to visit but never got round to. Then invite your old and new friends to explore them with you. Traveling close to home can teach us just as much as traveling halfway across the globe.
Returning home after living abroad is an invitation to have adventures in a place you may’ve overlooked before!
9. Get excited to plan your next work abroad adventure
And last, but definitely not least, don’t expect your wanderlust to ever fade. A traveler is a traveler. and even though you’re back home for now, that doesn’t mean your feet won’t start itching again soon.
Get started with planning your next trip. Whether it’s a weekend getaway or your next work abroad adventure, allow yourself to get ridiculously excited.
And who knows, you might just be jetting off to your next work abroad adventure very soon. There are plenty of jobs out there after all.
Coming home from abroad is another exciting chapter
Whether you’re returning home after living abroad for 10 years or were working abroad temporarily, coming home from abroad is always a little bittersweet and can be much harder than you might expect. That’s ok. Give yourself plenty of time to settle back into your old town. But not into your old life. After all, living abroad has probably changed you for the better.
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