Travelling... and Living Abroad (part 2)

When you go back to a country after living in it for a year or so, you have two choices: you travel there, or you live there again. In the first case, everything is beautiful! You only get to re-live the best part of what you hve been through. You see the shallow/or less shallow friends you made there, and they will - genuinely or not - try to make you have a great time, and be super happy to have you back. All of that because it's a short time. You spend lot more money, but that is travelling for you (that depends, I guess, of the place you chose to go to, Japan, for one, is hella expensive).

You can also go back to live again...

and that's when things get complicated.

You have ALREADY lived the uneasiness of moving, the unnatural forced adaptation to the culture, learned the language, made friends, got preferences on many things over others, and probably even gotten into your own little routine in the country.

While you head sets alarms everywhere, saying "Hey, you're not going to live the exact same thing be careful!" "Don't get yourself thinking it'll be everything you liked all over again! You're going there in a very different context!", you heart still long to live the life you had back then. The same company of people around you, the same easiness you had to do things because you were young and stupid, the same unimportant life concerns - mind you at the time they probably seemed huge, but now you might be silly enough to think, meh I wouldn't mind those problems back if they were the only thing I'd have to care about...not happening.

You see, life is like a nasty calculator that makes sure that, in all steps you take, you'll get trouble: it makes sure the amount of trouble you get is proportionally set in accordance with what you can physically and mentally take. So it's never easy. And as time goes by we always find our old trouble silly.

So yes, if you go back home, and come back to the same school you worked for, you know exactly what you'll get. You'll have similar troubles, similar friends, similar work conditions. That's one way to counter that. However, it's rare that we go for exactly the same thing we went for the first time.

Or is it just me?

I can only imagine my friend's stays in Japan:

High School: trouble finding oneself, the usual High School troubles, ups and downs about guys who we get crush on, frustration of not having as much freedom as adults, all that mixed with the fact that we are in a different culture and life setting that usual, learning a new language.

Depression. Feeling that we don't fit (that's probably worse in a different country where people know you don't belong just by a look at your face...). Need to have someone who understands, or at least pretends, so we get to let it out.... teenage crisis x100 because of the foreign factors.

University: Party time, short term friendships everywhere, party time, crazy cram study time, love story disasters, money problems... Everything goes super fast and you feel like while those are somehow good times, you never get to enjoy them completely as you should. You get the feeling those are the best times of your life, but at the same time you see time flying away and you will not get that back, ever. Big feeling of loss...

Work: You remember the good university times and want to keep in touch with people you studied with. Thing is everyone scattered away in either different cities or countries. Half of the people you know are probably married with kids. Party life is over, and you struggle with stuff you never had to struggle with before: insurance, bank stuff, paperwork, bills, late paychecks, being real sick away, but having no one close that really would care enough to get out of their own routine to stay with you more than to say "ohhh I'm sorry to hear that, get better ok? We'll hang out as soon as you're better".

You probably end up being a weight on any boyfriend you make, or if you're lucky, find one that will support you even after many fights and with the shadow of cultural difference in the background...or you date someone from another foreign country and you both complain about the same stuff....

...To Be Continued...

#traveling #livingabroad #workinAsia #studyinAsia