After my posts Are you homesick? and 4 Practical tips to manage homesickness and after some further thoughts about how to contrast this condition, here I am sharing 4 more suggestions to get involved into lots of things and fight homesickness.
1. Ask your family, friends and relatives to visit more often
Having your relatives and friends around it's a real panacea! Showing them around, chatting to them, telling each other what you have been doing since you last met, really helps you when you feel down in the dumps. When parents, relatives and friends visit, it's not only the visit itself that counts but the preparation.You must arrange for their accommodations, write down some sort of program for their stay, figure out where to take them, which places to visit. By the way, who is going to cook for your guests? I guess you've got to figure out the meals as well. All the process is going to take time and energy also but, most important, is going to distract you from the daily issues in order to focus on the upcoming task. I am convinced, from personal experience, that this can help you a lot.
2. Find a job or build a careerFor many people collateral activites are not enough, they need a classic 8-5 job. There's nothing wrong with this even if your chances to find a job in your new country depend on many factors:
- your competencies;
- the health of the economy in your elected country;
- the overall approach to foreigners in that particular country.
The article Career-planning tips for expat stay-at-home moms that appeared on I was an expat wife outlines 7 areas that you should concentrate on upon planning a career when abroad. Despite being tailored to moms, those areas really apply to everybody in such situations. From my experience, the one area that underlies all the choices you will make is to understand the host culture of the country where you are. Different countries have different approaches to work altogether. Some rules or behaviours are accepted in certain countries while, in others, they are absolutely avoided.
3. Community service and charity work
Volunteering and spending hours within your new community is extremely rewarding. Personally, I used to help children with incarcerated parents helping them doing their homework after school. At the end of the 2-hour period I had absolutely nothing left in terms of energy. What's the lesson? Being that tired I had no energies to even get homesick.
4. Continue your studies/learn a new language/degree etc
Carry on with their interrupted studies or took on a new subject or language is a popular choice among expats and people who spend long periods in other countries or cities. Many amongst us had to interrupt college or university at some time because of the kids, because we had to move or because of our career. If that applies to you, this could be a wonderful occasion to deepen your knowledge of your partner's language or to learn a new one and so boost your career opportunities.
And now over to you: what are your secrets against homesickness? What do you do when you start feeling that home desire growing? Share with us!
