Many have written how living abroad changes you in simple ways such as you learn to talk to strangers or how home is never the same. When you experience living abroad, it opens your mind to different world views, it helps you be less set in your own ways as you experience different realities, and you become two or more people depending on the language or place.
I have realized that no one can really prepare you or express how it feels to experience this life changing event.
Growing up in Mexico has shaped most of who I am, but working and living abroad has molded that “I” into a more complex mind and set of experiences. I love and admire, as well as objectively see the bad, in each place I’ve lived in and travel to.
There are many benefits of living abroad, but there is also a drawback like culture shock and loneliness. Even just studying abroad changes you.
Living abroad meaning
I define as living abroad to experience a country, different than your own, for more than a month in which you live, study or work, eat, and mingle with locals. I say more than a month, because less time is just a long holiday. It is when you stay in one place for longer, even if on weekends you take trips, but have a home base.
Here I list living abroad’s main advantages and disadvantages
Living abroad is easier when you’re younger
The first time I lived outside of Mexico, I was 5 years old. I remember starting kindergarten in San Antonio, surrounded by new people and new sounds. I didn’t speak English and surprisingly no one in my school spoke Spanish. The only ones that did were my brother two grades above me and other Mexican friends also above me who had moved at the same time. I was only 5 and I still remember Zac crying uncontrollably while we sat in a circle and the teacher talked. It seemed like gibberish to me. It was easy at 5 to make friends and learn the language. Playing helped me progress and I even got an award for 100 books read!
The reasons we had moved never came up because of how young I was. Despite this big change, I don’t remember it being hard or a difficult experience, just one that marked my life because of how fun and free we were. My parents later told me we had had to move because there were a lot of kidnappings in our city. This was the first time I felt forced to leave my country.
The second time I lived abroad was in an all girl’s catholic boarding school in Rhode Island. I turned 14. This was a bit different as 90% of the girls were from Mexico, two were from the U.S. and the rest from Chile. We weren’t allowed to speak Spanish or eat Mexican candy as we were there for the “American experience” whatever that was. I got awards for my English, while speaking Spanish in secret. I never got caught, a good thing because if you did you wouldn’t be able to go on the Saturday outing, the only day we left the school.
Some of my best friends are still from that time living abroad. It also helped me become my own person and start questioning ideas and rules that I deemed unfair or illogical. For example, one of the last outings was to Six Flags, it was already May or June, it was hot and we weren’t allowed to wear a halter top because we could provoke men to sin. Some girls and I decided to defy this rule, we hid our halter top underneath a sweatshirt and, once outside, displayed our shoulders. Despite what older people told me, I deeply believed (and still do) that other people’s sins weren’t my responsibility, just my own. My academic grades were excellent, my behavior ones not so much.
My parents have always encouraged this defiance of thought if I could back it up with rational and valid arguments. They laughed and knew my personality is “strong” (they would use another word) and just told me to not lower my academic grades.
We lived in a safe bubble.
This experience also taught me to be more empathetic. We were all similar but we had had different upbringings and obstacles growing up. Each one’s problem’s were valid. We shouldn’t minimize them just because someone is suffering “more”. How do you even quantify suffering?
Meeting the “Other” and realizing it is not very different than I
When I finished high-school, I moved to Rome for 3 months to live with my Italian uncle and learn Italian. My friends became a Polish girl my age, a Swiss-German eleven years older, a gay Dutch About 15 years older than me (relevant since I was brought up in a very Catholic, traditional environment) and others at least ten years older. It was the first time I was truly an equal to someone older and had conversations with people, real ones, that touched upon real topics.
I started thinking for myself. Maybe this gay thing wasn’t really a bad thing. It didn’t make my friend any different, just changed the sex of his partner. For an eighteen year old who had grown with the idea that this was not natural, or normal and had heard it all her life, it was a big deal.
For my semester abroad in college, I lived with a transwoman. She was so open to my curiosity and I was able to get sincere answers of what it was like for her from being pansexual to her sex change operation. Living abroad really showed me other valid ways of being. I am eternally grateful to her for understanding I had never talked to someone like her and just needed to be taught a thing or two.
At Rice, I majored in Sociology, which helped me to deconstruct everything I believed in and question why I believed it. I came home to family meals (I lived at home not on-campus) and we had discussions on themes about gender, identity, inequality and sexuality. My sister and I were allowed to even question why my parents believed what they believed in. We all grew and became more tolerant.
Choice vs Displacement when moving abroad
The real shock though, came about a year and a half later.
Mexico’s war on drugs started. Violence surged. Websites tallied the most dangerous cities in the world. Cuernavaca was among those.
My parents moved us to Houston. It wasn’t my choice but I understood. Knowing why we had moved and understanding, didn’t change my sadness and anger. My boyfriend at the time, who I had been dating for three years, didn’t help either. He would tell me I had no right to cry as I was the one who abandoned him. I was torn.
On the one hand, I was depressed without knowing it.
This wasn’t like the previous times abroad. This felt like I had no choice. It didn’t feel like an adventure, but a consequence of other people’s choices.
I had dropped out of my first semester of college and was reapplying. I had always wanted to study Creative Writing, but applied to Rice as Undecided to stay in Houston. A city I hated without knowing why, with no friends, too much free time, and a relationship that made me feel worse.
On the other hand, I forced myself to smile and do stuff. High-functioning depression is harder to diagnose.
My parents were making this great sacrifice so we could be safe. How could I behave like a brat and not take advantage of it? My mom had also left her life behind. I had to make the same effort. I started continuing education courses. My boyfriend flew over about once a month, the tickets divided between my dad, my boyfriend, and my tutoring money.
Criticizing people who flee their home countries hits close to home. Situations force you to leave sometimes. Leave the only home you know without a certainty if you will ever live there again. It creates an emptiness that is hard to explain; of being left without a country, a part of you, and your identity ripped apart.
I knew that despite fleeing Mexico, I was privileged. We had student visas (even my mom studied to avoid problems with immigration). It still wasn’t my country. I could be sent home whenever, but where was home?
I wrote some poems reflecting these feelings exactly. Check them out here and here.
Re-Defining Home
I had to confront this question coming back from my semester abroad in England.
Before leaving for Norwich, Rice had canceled my SEVIS (a paper you pay for that validates your visa) because of volunteer work, unpaid volunteer work. They did this to be cautious, they said. Despite me volunteering to be with kids at the play area at the Children’s Assessment Center. Not paid. Not getting anything in return except helping victims of sexual abuse.
I had to stop studying in the U.S. for a semester, and then I could have the SEVIS reinstated (by paying for it again) and not have my visa canceled. I sought guidance by the International Office at Rice. Since I was studying abroad for a semester, they said I could come back and take summer classes. During my easter break I cam back home and went to the office to check my status. Everything was fine, they told me.
I went back and finished my exams. Enjoyed my last days with some of my best friends to this day and flew back home, home to Houston.
I was stopped, put into a small secondary check room. This Asian-American officer was very nice, tried to help me and even told me his superiors didn’t believe my story even though he had confirmed it with three different people at the university. I had great academic standing. An hour passed and he came back with a face that said I’m sorry and took me to the bigger room.
I waited.
I was called to a room. This female officer, with a Hispanic last-name, was training a young white male. She asked me questions. I answered. She said that if it had been unpaid then why was it canceled. My story didn’t add up. I asked her to ask the university. She said she had and they said the same thing but something was wrong. Panic set in.
I was told to go back into the big waiting room. No phones were allowed but I still managed to send my mom a message that something was wrong. She was waiting for me outside.
I was called back in. She gave me a bullshit story about how her daughter was my same age and she was going to try to help me because she would want someone to help her daughter. Then proceeded to tell me that she had the power to deport me and cancel both my tourist and student visa and I wouldn’t finish college as I wouldn’t be allowed in, in 5 years. She was rude. She was condescending. She waved her power in my face and taunted me with it.
I started crying. Deported? To Mexico, it wasn’t my home anymore. Houston was. I had been there for 3 years, my family was here.
Uncontrollable crying. She shouted at me to stop crying and shut up. I started to ask her something. She screamed, “I thought I told you to shut up.” Between sobs, and a bit emboldened, I answered “Yes, but you also don’t want to see me cry, so where is the bathroom.” Embarrassment briefly passed through her eyes. “Oh.”
I was a dirty Mexican trying to steal American jobs. I was a cheat. That was her perception.
Outside I texted my dad. I am getting deported.
Maybe he could get a lawyer. Maybe he could help me. I needed my daddy.
My eyes still water reliving the feelings of that day. Of those excruciating 5 hours.
The woman called me in again, into her small, cramped, suffocating office. Since she was nice, she was going to let me through with my tourist but I had to fix my papers, leave the country and come back before my first class of summer school on Tuesday. It was Saturday.
So if I could get deported from what felt like my home, to someplace that didn’t feel like home anymore. What did this mean?
Home became a split place. Two places at once, now three, where my family was, where I was at any given time.
Your personality and identity become separated by language
I have different personalities based on the language I use. Many people can tell you this is true.
My husband can tell you about this. Rome has been his first time living abroad and he told me how frustrated he felt that he felt different; he couldn’t tell the same jokes and people in Rome knew a different Humberto than his friends in Mexico. I validated his feelings and told him this was normal, each country and language help you re-develop and heighten different parts of your personality.
I am more sarcastic in Spanish. I am deeper and joke around more in English. I am quieter in Italian.
You also realize how the world treats you differently based on the country on your passport. As an Italian, I am the poor Italian woman sent to extra revision that we need to help get on her way faster. As a Mexican, I am the girl who is probably trying to stay there illegally or gets asked multiple questions even when entering Bahamas.
I am different versions of myself but still just Lorenza.
Reverse culture shock
Living abroad doesn’t prepare you for returning home.
I had a hard time starting to date when I finally moved back to Mexico after almost 7 years in Houston. I started seeing the bad things and comparing. Missing my old home. Missing H.E.B. Noticing even when a guy excused the butterfly tea strainer the restaurant had given him.
Would I be able to date in Mexico as a woman who now identified as bisexual, who thought gender could be fluid as well as sexuality and who was a proud Feminist?
Feminism, a bad word especially among the people I knew in Mexico. I was proud and I would not allow even micro-aggressions, making me the exaggerating, always angry, man-hating woman. Fine. But did I want to continue living in my home country? Did it still feel completely like home? Did Houston? Did I want to raise kids in Mexico?
Living abroad changes you completely, and coming back is not easy. You have to find your new niches, sometimes new friends.
Distance means nothing after moving abroad
You learn the true meaning of distance and friendships when you live abroad. One of my best friends from Mexico, would come over with a bottle of wine every time I was back in town. We would always talk for hours and pick up where we had left off. It makes you appreciate those who always make an effort and who are always there, and let go of those who don’t allowing for them to just be a part of your story.
There are no far friends if there is a will. I went to my Polish friend’s wedding in Warsaw, she came to mine in Mexico. A weekend in Europe for an important event becomes doable if you find a cheap ticket. Waiting to have whole weeks off to visit a far off place or friends and family is no longer an option. Living abroad changes how you perceive distance and relationships. Three-day international weekend trip for a friend’s graduation? Yes, please.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, the new travel normal might change, making these short visits harder. This is what it was like traveling during the pandemic and planning for the travel.
Everyone that can should live abroad
Living abroad changes you for the better. Actually living and experiencing a different culture, not just being a tourist. It allows you to be more empathetic and realize that your way of living is not the only valid one. It develops your critical thinking and you learn to more objectively look back upon your own country and see ways you can help make it better. Home becomes homes. Multiple, plural, global.
If you can’t live abroad then search for international residents in your home town, reach out. Maybe there are refugees or language students. Find out more about them. There are always ways to learn about different cultures and ways of life.
In this world we need more empathy. Living abroad can help us see how decisions in one part of the world have repercussions on the other side. Opening our hearts to others and others’ needs would make the situation we are living today, the coronavirus, Covid-19, pandemic easier on everyone, especially those less fortunate than us.
I will soon dedicate a post to the wonderful things about Mexico. A country I love and sometimes admire, but also makes me angry because we love to pull each other down (see Crab Mentality). This makes me especially angry when we have proven we can rise above that and stand together, like we did during the earthquake of September 19, 2017.