One of the golden rules of moving abroad is to stick it out for at least two years. With no friends or family for back-up, financial insecurity and unfamiliar surroundings, it’s easy to get homesick and run back to what you know.
One of my neighbours was a Canadian war bride and when she arrived from London 60-odd years ago she had no clue whether she would even see her family again. She had to rely on letters that took an age to arrive and like most other immigrants at the time there was no turning back so she just had to make it work.
These days if you’ve got the money to get over here and you are not bothered about swallowing your pride, you can book a flight back home easily and sleep in someone’s spare room until you sort yourself out. You only have to spend five minutes on an ex-pat message board to see how many disillusioned people slink back home.
You can quickly forget all the reasons why you decided to make the move and start romanticising the “old country” while still trying to get to grips with the oddities and burearcracy of your newly chosen home. I arrived in the summer of 2005 and was too busy enjoying all the kayaking, biking, hiking etc to think much about what I’d left behind. Everything was new and exciting and there were still plenty of savings to burn through so it was a bit like being on an extended holiday.
The melancholy set in with the rain and diminishing bank account. I missed friends and family and the old certainties about my career and general status in life. Not being able to go out for an impromptu coffee or hang out at the weekend made me feel a bit lonely and even more reliant on my partner for entertainment and companionship. And not having anyone to visit over Christmas was also quite weird.
But email, MSN and Skype has been great for staying in touch with people. Sending off regular photos and even an audio file of my awful rendition of O Canada on Canada Day has kept me on the radar and kept old friends entertained. Okay, so the nature of the relationship has changed and I had to miss a good friend’s wedding, but we can still be a part of each other’s lives. And if you’ve spent 10 or even 20 years maintaining a friendship, it’s hard just to drop it because you know longer share the same area code.
I have all my favourite news websites bookmarked, so I have no trouble keeping up with what’s going on in the UK and can still have the same old conversations about current affairs and pop culture. The one bad thing about having such easy access to Britsh media is that I know more about what’s going on in the UK than over here so sometimes don’t feel truly engaged with some aspects of life here.
We had a bit of a Brit invasion over the summer and I was a little worried that when we waved the last visitors through the YVR departure gate, that we’d want to jump on the plane with them. But having visitors made us appreciate our new lives even more and now I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live in the UK again.
I’ve been here 18 months now and I’m still not totally in my comfort zone. But I’ve had18 months to start developing a life here and connections with new people and places so there is far less hankering for the good old days when life was easy and familiar. I’ve stopped obsessing about the things I can’t have or do anymore and just enjoy the stuff I can do instead. It’s about accepting the fact that the grass is just a different shade of green on the other side.
Most importantly, I’ve made a mental shift. When I think of home, I think of where I am rather than where I used to be.
YB
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