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What People Don’t Tell You About Moving Abroad
Your first year is probably going to suck, but you just have to get through it.
We’ve all seen the people who write articles about how they moved to the other side of the world and seemingly became immediately successful. There are the influencers who are living the dream, doing yoga on Instagram, sharing raw food recipes from the jungle, or bloggers writing from a tropical beach.
If that’s you, congratulations. But if you’re planning on packing your life in a suitcase and leaving your country, I want you to know the experience might not be all that social media leads you to believe.
If there’s one thing I wish somebody had told me before I moved abroad, it’s this:
It’s probably going to suck for about a year.
The Best Advice
I moved from my small town in Finland to Barcelona in 2006, at 21 years old. I never moved back, although there were definitely times I thought I would have to.
About a year into living abroad, I started dating the man who would become my boyfriend of six years. With him, I ended up packing up and moving to Costa Rica and later to Argentina, where I still am, 15 years after I left home.