8 Ways Living Abroad Has Changed Me

I knew from a young age that finding myself in another country amidst unfamiliar food, hearing authentic live music, getting lost down winding cobblestone streets and meeting people from far away places made me feel alive. Traveling in overnight trains across Europe with no cell phones, finding myself on sketchy boats to small islands in the Caribbean, learning that I can feel at home on so many different continents and seeing my children find joy in these same thrills has made this life addictive. When I look back on my early desires to travel and match them with my opportunities to live abroad and really sink into another culture, I know that I have been fundamentally changed for good.

Not everyone has the opportunity to live abroad, but most have an opportunity to visit another place with open eyes and experience a culture outside their own. Here are some life lessons I have developed by having the opportunity to live and travel outside my home country.

1. The world is full of well intentioned and kind people. I want to say this as we especially aware of immigrants and what it means to be foreign in today’s political climate. There have been so many experiences where my family has been welcomed with open arms by people who don’t know me or benefit from my money. They are kind because they want to represent their country with pride and genuinely want foreigners to see the beauty and warmth of their country. They are generous, kind, open minded and curious about America. I have way more good experiences than bad ones, more acceptance than resistance, and still so much more to learn. I’m chatty by nature, so having conversations with people we meet on our journeys comes naturally for me, but I want my kids to see that people from all over have interesting stories to share and connecting with them makes visiting a new culture so much more fulfilling.
2. It’s a small world after all. When you come across someone from half way around the globe who is from your hometown or you went to the same college, it is wild how you can find connections when you get to talking with new people. But outside of coincidences, you just learn that most people are really after the same things in life. We are not so different in our desires for a happy life, we just have different opportunities to get there.
3. I am resilient. I can do hard things. I can survive trying times when things get stressful (fainting in a Korean medical clinic – that’s a story for another time), when I miss my family, when I am trying to navigate normal life in a foreign language and I just want a Jersey Mike’s for lunch. For real though, living in other countries makes you more immune to embarrassing or awkward situations, makes it easier to ask for help, to admit you messed up, and to find humor in the “oops”. Good example, I once sent my kids downstairs to get milk from our local market. I thought I gave them Korean cash (we were very new), but it turns out I gave them mall bucks we had gotten a few days before. In my defense, it didn’t look that different. Needless to say, the kids came back with quite a story when the clerk couldn’t understand why these two foreign kids showed up to pay with mall bucks. Oops. Good thing they didn’t hold that against me and they will still go into the market when I need them to. Lesson learned: have grace with yourself.
4. I am comfortable in my own company. Being foreign does make it a little easier in this department, but I am very comfortable being out in the world on my own. I like to have my headphones in and create my own soundtrack to the world around me. I have been known to see movies alone, take myself to lunch and loads of other errands or experiences when you only have you for company. I know that if I can’t find someone who can go with me, I am ok to have experiences on my own. I have recently seen a lot of blogs talking about solo travel and I love the idea that you shouldn’t miss out on experiences because you don’t have a partner to go with.
5. I can make the best out of all kinds of situations. I have not always had the best of experiences while traveling or living abroad. Call it mindset or perspective, but I really try to focus on what is going right, instead of what is going wrong (except the time we lost our AirCon for 3 weeks in the Cartagena heat, I became someone I wasn’t proud of of). Nonetheless, I try to spend time enjoying the things I know I will miss when this chapter is over, I make time to eat my favorite local food, and I try to reflect on what this experience is giving us. What will we look back and say about our time here? What are the memories we will take with us? Sometimes the best of lessons come from challenging times and the best memories are the stories about things gone wrong.
6. I am consistently inspired. To live life to its fullest. Part of this comes from the newness of living in many changing locations. I get the opportunity to try out living in new cities, changing weather, a variety of architecture and amazing restaurants every few years. If variety is the spice of life, traveling is the easiest way to add lots of flavor. I can romanticize my life with many beautiful experiences just out of sheer access to interesting and changing places. There is an appreciation of our current situation purely because I know we are on a limited time clock and I want to make the most of our time. I also enjoy learning how other cultures define successful and full lives. I love to discover how other countries prioritize family, love, happiness, their time, work life and rest. Each culture has interesting customs that we can take with us.
7. Most of my preconceived ideas of places were wrong. We see beautiful instagram photos, read some guide book excerpts, we might have even seen an episode of Parts Unknown featuring a certain location, but until you have eaten the food, walked the streets, and smelled the smells – it’s hard to match your expectations with reality. Not everything will be as you expect, but most of the time it will be better and you will be surprised by what you end up loving the most. I am always inspired to visit places based on what I am seeing and reading from others, but I am also reminded to stay open-minded. I like to set a relatively low bar and be pleasantly surprised by what comes my way. I learned this lesson with my kids, when I used to hype our destinations with all the highlights and they would be disappointed by the downtime or things not going as planned. Now I tell them about what I researched, but we should all be ready to change plans if it isn’t something we are enjoying. Lesson learned: stay flexible.
8. Home is different for all of us. I know that a physical home starts with a place that you decorate to feel like yours, but quickly becomes the paths where you walk your dog, your favorite place to get your matcha latte, the neighbors you chat with on your way out, and the friends you meet along the way. It becomes the community you build. Your home can be a place where you don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs and you figure it out anyways. I have homes I will never see again, but they have shaped me in valuable ways and I bring them with me. A long time ago, when we started this journey with our kids, I wondered if they would feel like they didn’t have roots. Would they know where they came from? They will have lived a childhood predominantly outside America and yet they are Americans. It’s cliche to say they are citizens of the world, but I hope they will understand that home isn’t always a physical location, it’s where you build your community and that you take that with you wherever you go. A few weeks ago, our international school shared a poem the kids wrote together and I just loved how it described their feelings about being third culture kids:

My time frames in different places have varied, but they have all resulted in similar feelings. I am grateful for all my experiences (my love letter to Cartagena), even if I wouldn’t go back, living abroad has changed me for the better because of my time in each of these places.