Keep In Touch With Your Expat Friends - 5 Reasons Why

If you live abroad or have recently moved, you are aware how important it is to make new friends and interact with the locals. However, maintaining your friendship with other expats from your country might become difficult, once your new life takes over. Expats often face challenges when it comes to feeling lonely and not feeling at home, however, through our experience we know that it helps having people with similar characteristics and lifestyles around. In this article we highlight five reasons how keeping in touch with your expat friends from your home country can ease the challenges related when living abroad.

Sharing experiences

Give and receive information. Sharing experiences with your fellow expats can be very beneficial.  You will get an insight of what they have been through, become aware of what to expect and know what they did to overcome similar problems. Most likely they will go through the same challenges before or after you. In addition to that, given you have similar mentalities, you are more likely to understand each other.

Use Your Home Language

While it can be good to learn a new language, it is also recommended that you keep practising your home language. This usually helps expats feel more at home and are able to express themselves better. When speaking in your own language, you will be able to understand jokes, interact more with people, and have to be ability to speak about certain things you do not usually share with non-expat friends.

Get Unique Tips

When you move to a new country, by time you will start missing certain things from your home country, such as specific ingredients or types of clothing, etc. The chances are that the other expats from your country experienced this too, and they might give you the right tips to get what you are looking for, due to their experience.

Keep Yourself Up To Date

When you leave your country, you might get too caught up with your new life and you totally loose track with what is happening back home. You will find out things that unless you had these contacts, you will not have discovered certain things. In addition to that, when keeping in contact with your expat friends, you are likely to be invited to events and get togethers with people you ‘know’.