Thursday, August 12, 2010

Making a Home in Another Country

Home



The answer to your question is found in your definition of the word ‘home’.

Is home the place where you grew up? Or is it where the majority of your family live? Or is it the country on your passport? Or is it where you work, have a house or flat, have a social life and where you are raising a family-where you are making a life for yourself?

Anthony, an expat in Dubai, asks ‘Can a place only be called home when it stops being different?’ Jane, an expat living in the States says ‘I had to start calling my current location ‘home’ or I would feel constantly homesick for the place where the rest of my family are.’

If you don’t feel you are home then you are open to suffering homesickness. You feel landless even if you buy your own property. You start a family, advance in your career, make friends with people around you, learn the best shops for the bet deals, discover the best little restaurants, and yet you still don’t call it home.

Create a sense of belonging.

If home is about belonging, as in ‘I feel right at home with these people,’ then one way of creating a sense of belonging is to invest in the host culture. Join a community gardening scheme that aims to maintain an attractive village. Don’t just attend church, volunteer for several committees within the church. Don’t just work at a charity shop, get involved at a level where your presence makes a real difference. Investing in a community turns that community into more than just a place where you live; your investment deepens the meaning of that place, connects you and the community becomes your home.

This question of making a new place home isn’t just about moving to a different country, but about moving away from familiar surroundings. People move across the United States and take as many years to settle in as people who move to another country. Don’t place too much credit on being an expat, some of this is normal for any move.

Let go of the fear of becoming too settled.

As you’re asking the question is seems as though you want to feel at home where you are, but something prevents you from doing so.

Some people have a fear of calling their expat world ‘home’ in case it upsets people ‘back home’. This can possibly be overcome with careful and reassuring discussions with friends and family. Help them understand that ‘home’ can be defined in many ways and that you need to call the place where you are at the moment ‘home’ so you can thrive while you’re there.

Some people worry that by embracing the new culture as home they may get too settled in and never return to their former home. If you really want to return enough, you will. But if you’re that happy in your new location, why rush back? Live where you’re happiest. This doesn’t mean you are being disloyal or unpatriotic. You can still love your home country even if you choose to live in another country.

Home is just a word. Change your definitions, invest more in the local community, and simply enjoy living where you are living and you will find that you are home. Can ever truly make another country home? The answer is, ‘most definitely.’

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