An Abstract Guide to Assimilation: How to Make a Home in a Foreign Country (REVISED)

It’s not always easy to adapt to life in a foreign country. Differences in culture, language, geography, and history can make the experience intensely lonely, though the rewards are sweet. Because the transition is mostly mental, here are 5 abstract but proven tips to help you on the way to feeling fully assimilated, wherever you may have chosen to settle:

1. Answer one question first: “Why am I here?”

Start by asking yourself this: Why am I here? What drove me – or pulled me- to this place? The answers may be disarmingly simple. Maybe it was a story that inspired your move, maybe you want to set up an ordinary life abroad – to wake up, go to work, meet friends for a drink, buy toothpaste on the way home – or maybe you want to affect some change. The reasons themselves don’t matter. What matters is that you have some private understanding of why you want to be here, in this situation. When know that, you can start to let yourself feel comfortable in your new surroundings.

2. Don’t compare

It can be valuable to investigate the differences (and similarities!) between where you’re from and where you are. In a way, it’s irresistible. It’s part of why it’s so compelling to travel and to live abroad. But you cannot do it constantly, or you will never be able to look at where you are as a home.

The problem comes when the language of comparison is the only one we use to describe where we are. Sometimes the most important thing to do is this: put down your travel writer’s pen, rest your probing eyes, forget for a while to speak. Allow yourself to simply be here. Look up at the sky, the new, different sky, and see it just as it is: wide, littered with clouds and stars. Have coffee in a square and consider that this is just a coffee, this is just a square, this is just a little table from which I can see things happen. Run yourself a bath. These are your taps now; never mind that where you’re from, they’d be different. Let banalities, not revelations, rule your day.

3. Learn to become intimate with places, not just people

We tend to think of relationships in human terms, but we relate to places in much the same way, and by choosing to live abroad, we’re making a commitment to explore and understand our new home.

To cultivate the relationship, you’ll want to spend a lot of time walking and watching. Become a flâneur, a kind of wanderer or loiterer. Take the writer Edmund White’s advice. In a book on Paris, White writes that, “He (or she) is…in search of a private moment, not a lesson…it is the private Proustian touchstone – the madeleine, the tilting paving stone – that the flâneur is tracking down.” This sort of quest for something intensely personal, something real to hold on to, is what will make you feel intimate with your new surroundings.

4. Break bread

A relationship with the place you live is important, but it’s not enough to nourish the expat for long. To feel settled, you’ll also need to develop meaningful human relationships. The best way to do this is to eat with people – friends, lovers, co-workers, acquaintances. Invite them to dine at your place; accept  invitations to dine at theirs. Act graciously – cook your favorite recipe, or bring a bottle of wine or a special treat to thank your hosts.

The ritual of a shared meal is your lifeline in more than one way. We need to sustain ourselves not just on food but on company, and the intimacy of cooking, eating, and cleaning will bring you closer to the people in your life. Rooting yourself in a community will ultimately make the difference between feeling adrift and at home.

5. But after all that, don’t forget where you come from

The most important thing, in the end, is to be yourself. The narrator of Javiar Marias’ All Souls, a portrait of a foreigner in Oxford, marvels at one point that, “there’s no one here who knew me as a…child.” This is the great truth of living abroad. It’s lonely living somewhere that has no memory of you, and it’s also deliciously liberating. For me that’s part of the fun – the sense of freedom, the ability to reinvent myself.

But you cannot be an island. Even as you feel yourself becoming a part of the landscape, a local, someone who belongs – never forget where you’re from. Never forget that there’s a place where people did know you as a child. Adapting to a new place is not about erasing yourself. It’s about building upon what’s already there. Your funny accent, your behavioral quirks, your cultural history – it’s all part of the process.