Coming Home After Living Abroad

Dealing with Culture Shock and Readjusting to Life in Your Country

Returning from a work or study abroad experience? Here are a few ways to get over culture shock and appreciate both your time spent away and life in your home country.

Returning to your home country after living abroad can be difficult. While it is great to see all of the people you care about again, there is still culture shock to deal with. Not to mention the fact that most of your family and friends, despite their genuine interest in your experience, probably do not understand what it was like in whatever country you just returned from.

Here is some advice on dealing with the emotional time after returning from an extended stay abroad.

Tips for Keeping the Other Country in Your Life

• Find someone to talk to who is from the country you've just gotten back from. If the language of the other country is not your native language, you can at least try to find someone to speak that language with.
• Chat with someone else who lived abroad, somewhere different from where you were, and compare experiences.
• Don't lose touch with people overseas – write letters, send postcards from your home country, chat with them on Skype, or send emails.
• Try to incorporate aspects of the culture and/or lifestyle you just left into your everyday life. For example, if you rode a bike everywhere abroad, use one in your home country.

Tips for Readjusting to Being at Home and Appreciating Where Your Are

• Do something fun, be it going to a sporting event, your favorite restaurant, a cool museum, the beach you've spent several summers on, that you can only do in your home country.
• Get involved with some sort of activity you love in your community...especially if you are still in the process of finding a job.
• Invite friends over who you haven't seen in a while; work on reconnecting with people.
• Visit relatives, be they nearby or in another part of the country.
• Go to a town, city, landmark, etc. that you've never been to before.
• Read a book about culture shock when returning home after living abroad, such as Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away (Broadway Books, 1999).

Any of the above suggestions can help you appreciate the fact that you now have two homes, a broader understanding of the world, a host of memorable experiences, and most importantly the opportunity to resume and build up a life for yourself in your home country. Time living abroad is a fantastic experience, and one of the best ways to readjust after returning is to achieve a balance between appreciating what you just left and appreciating where you are.