Living abroad is incredible. Don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t all late nights at the coffee shop with friends and adventures on cobble stone streets. In some cases even traveling abroad for a short amount of time can be a difficult and stressful experience, which is probably why only somewhere around 35% of Americans even own a passport. There is a thrill and excitement that accompanies you as you pack all of your belongings and venture out to a new part of the world to create a new life. Your friends and family tell you that you are so brave and that they admire your independence. They tell you they envy the adventures you will have and muse over the amazing people you will meet. What they don’ tell you? Well, that is a whole different story.
5. The movies lie.
I grew up watching Disney Characters (yes, I’m talking about you Lizzy Macguire), pop stars and movie stars frolic around Europe on the back of mopeds. These beautiful young girls- who let’s be real, had no business traveling through Europe alone- escaped from their mundane reality back home and disappeared in to a life of romance, food and sightseeing. I remember being a delusional 16 year old packing for my first international trip to Spain and thinking that I would meet some handsome Spanish man and we would fall in love. I imagined that we would meet on the street one day and he would take me out for romantic dinners and show me around the city. Of course this would happen, who wouldn’t want to show an awkward American teenager around a city? This in fact did not happen. Shocker. I had an amazing trip to Spain but I did not get invited on to the back of some handsome man’s moped. Thanks for getting a girls hopes up, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.
Now fast forward to 25 year old bitter me- 9 years and 7 countries later and I am here to tell you that living abroad as portrayed in the movies is still one big lie. In the movies it seems like it is all rainbows and butterflies and that once you show up everything will just fall in to place. This is false. Living abroad can come with a huge list of setbacks and problems. From setting up visas and registration papers to opening a bank account to finding an apartment nothing is simple. However, these setbacks and challenges contribute to the overall experience and will ultimately make you a stronger and well balanced person. I now measure my day by personal victories: McKenzie: 1, Ukraine: 0.
You will cry. You will question why you are here and you will ultimately stuff your face with local ice cream bars. But these struggles and bad days add to the experience and make the good days that much sweeter. You will waste days with new friends, integrate in to a new community, participate in local traditions and get to know so much more about yourself. While traveling and living in foreign countries you will have endless opportunities to meet amazing people, whether fellow travelers or natives, and these people may impact your life in ways you never imagined. The good and the bad experiences of living abroad are what make the life complete. So the next time you find youself cursing the local customs of whatever place you are just know that another life changing experience is likely right around the corner.
4. Sometimes you will hate your adopted country.
I live in Ukraine and I will go on the record and say that I love this country. I truly do. I see so many beautiful things on a daily basis and have met so many incredible people. But living abroad is like being in a relationship with someone- there are ups and downs. I am currently in a relationship with Ukraine and when Ukraine doesn’t fulfill a need, or if Ukraine lets me down when I need him the most, I will get annoyed and probably a little upset. I am human and I think that it is ok for me to get a little pissed sometimes about facets of life here. Like with any relationship, you should never bottle your feelings up until they explode leaving a big mess. Aint nobody got time for that.
I will have days where I curse the weather (all of winter), I will shake my head at what I consider to be a backwards way of doing something, and I will question my life here and everything I am. I am entitled to these feelings. On any given day I will sway from complete content to complete distain. Like when the post office claims they don’t have your package yet even though you have checked the tracking number and are certain it is there (I am on to you). When I find myself getting worked up I just step back and take a breath. A little controlled breathing does wonders for a person’s mental sanity. Yes, controlled breathing and wine are a girl’s best friend.
These bad days will never even come close to the amount of good days I have. For every negative encounter with an angry babushka or marshrutka driver there are always at least 2 friendly shop keeper exchanges, and those keep me going. The small victories mentioned above and the friends who brighten my day assure me that I am right where I am supposed to be.
3. You will be lonely, and that is OK.
This makes me remember a scene from the movie ‘Eat, Pray Love” where Liz is having a hard time adjusting to her life after divorce. She says:
“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.”
Life in a new country can be lonely. You are far from your friends, family and the comforts that made life back home so safe and secure. I spend a large variety of my time in Ukraine alone and at first that was incredibly hard to get used to. I was familiar with being surrounded by people and never really having time to sit and be alone with my thoughts. But in Ukraine I can’t call up my friends to go out and grab some dinner, or jump in my car and drive to my parent’s house for the night; instead my friends became tv shows and cheesy romantic comedies. This situation was made worse by the fact that I arrived at my site during the dead of winter and was faced with months of pent up solitude inside a big, quiet apartment.
But I made it. I’ve been in country for 7 months and I made it through my first winter. Now the sun is shining and the city has come alive. My winter experience made me realize that it is ok to be lonely. I can own that loneliness and use those feelings to transform me in to a more well-rounded person. I own my loneliness and embrace my time alone in my apartment because it is teaching me who I really am.
2. Learning a new language will make you want to stick your head in the oven.
“I can learn Ukrainian. I mean I did take Spanish for 5 years and live in South Africa.” After 7 months in Ukraine I can tell you that my reasoning prior to coming here was deeply flawed and neither of these experiences helped me as I thought they would. Learning a new language as an adult is hard, plain and simple. I think all languages are difficult but I would like to point out that Ukrainian is especially hard because it involves a completely different alphabet. During our first 3 months in Ukraine we had 4 hours of language classes a day and we practiced nonstop with our host families. However, once on my own at site I stopped having the controlled language lessons I was used to and did not have to speak with a host family anymore. I will admit that I am disappointed that my language has suffered and I wish I would practice more. However, I still believe I can turn it around and the best way to practice and improve is to get out there and communicate with people, make friends and speak to strangers you meet. I am certain that I will never learn Ukrainian from a book, I need to motivate myself and just get out there and try. In the meantime I will embrace my language errors and just laugh at myself when I say “bitch” instead of “sugar.”
1. Your life will still not feel complete.
I often hear people talking about their desire to live abroad and more often than not these sweeping declarations are made following a nasty break up or a change in employment. People have a tendency to run away from problems in life rather than facing them head on, myself included. This is not to say that everyone who lives abroad fits into this category but you have to admit that usually a person who moves abroad feels some kind of incompleteness in their life and their adventure abroad is meant to fill that void.
Spoiler alert: moving abroad will not fill that void. Only you can fill that void. And your life will not be made complete because of a move to a new city; your life will feel complete because you have found what you are looking for. I am using my time abroad to figure out who I am and what I want. I hope to embrace the qualities about myself that I like and change the ones I don’t. My life may not be complete but living abroad is helping me get closer to the person I want to be.
