there are many reasons why you would decide to live abroad either for work study a fresh start or just a better quality of life and it can be a scary decision to make but living abroad can really shape you as a person and give you a different outlook on life firstly you're going to be definitely stepping out of your comfort zone After High School I got accepted into my applied sciences University in the Netherlands and I remember before leaving my friends did a little surprise goodbye get-together for me because I'm gonna leave the country for
unknown amount of time and I don't know if I'm gonna even come back it was really cute sweet and unexpected and one of my friends asked me I can't imagine doing something like this by myself are you nervous to be leaving nervous I feel freaking petrified I have no idea what I'm doing before and during the trip to the Netherlands there was a lot of confusion and unknowingness about how and where I'm gonna live I never visited the city before and to be honest I didn't even know that Dutch is a language I had no
idea what language they speak in the Netherlands but I would never guess that it was Dutch I went to study in the Netherlands because I knew that I wanted to study abroad and study in English and UK was way too expensive I really liked the program and I got accepted so I couldn't say no but this was a big step for me because I was really relying on my parents at the time they were making me food and doing my laundry and now I was in a new city new country where I didn't speak the
language I had to figure out how to live in my own and sustain myself it might all sound overwhelming and it might be but if you are a student just like I was then you'll meet a lot of people that are on the same boat as you so it's not going to be that bad secondly it will never feel like home well that's not entirely true in my first year in the Netherlands I was feeling homesick quite often and being there was fun but I just didn't feel like I belong and yet in my first
year when I went back home for Christmas all I would talk about was the Netherlands and so that way I also didn't really feel like home when I was feeling homesick I would cook buckwheat and play Russian music to make me feel better and so after one year of living in the Netherlands I kind of understood the gist of it I made some friends and I attended some clubs like dancing and theater that made me feel like I was in the right place and now from this experience I would say that my definition of home
changed now home is where I make it to be home is where my friends and family is but also home is where I am if I wanted to be foreign abroad is quite isolating especially the first year of your relocation for students it can be a bit easier because as I said before there's a lot of people in the same boat as you so you can make a lot of good friends by just because you're in the same circumstances but for expats it can be a bit trickier however if you're a student or an expat
I would highly recommend joining some kind of club or an association or some kind of activity that people do multiple times throughout the month so that you can talk to people and make friends that have the same interest as you when I was living in Slovakia alone as an intern student I joined dance classes and I joined an improv team even though the Improv I could have made better connections because we're actually have to talk to each other I had to quit it since I didn't have the money to do it but at the dance
classes I did meet some new people if you live in a big city there's most likely an expat Community where you can start making connections they're also in the same situation as you so you'll probably find people to talk to language is a big barrier if you decide to live in a country where you don't speak it in the Netherlands everybody speaks very good English and their movies play in English but if you want to fully integrate into their country you of course need to learn their language or at least try but it's easier said
than done I took some Dutch classes and in the beginning there were around 30 people a room full of students excited to learn Dutch but after like a half a year there were only three people left and it was a bit awkward the teacher also wasn't the greatest he was a bit too talkative therefore we had less time to talk about grammar and practice our Dutch so it all came down to how you studied outside of class I know that's how it usually goes but learning a language is quite time consuming and it has to
be your priority you really need to prioritize it and at the time I was focusing on developing other skills like video editing and graphic design and therefore Dutch will shifted to the back end some people I know did learn Dutch and now they're happily integrated into their society and they can add it to their resume which is a great plus but if you're someone that kind of already knows the language because you studied it in school you'll be surprised by the interactions you have with the locals because you'll be experiencing things that people probably don't
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the classes and see if you like it or not use my code to participate and use the link in the description thank you so much for the sponsor and not skipping through the ad [Music] let's get back to the video now that we're done with the more serious stuff let's move on to the more fun stuff when it comes to living abroad if you like traveling and exploring you'll probably know the country better than the locals coming from Riga the capital of Latvia where most of our population even lives I was so surprised to hear
how little Germans visited Berlin because that's the capital everything is happening there but to be honest it makes sense because Germany is a very big country and depending on where you live Berlin can be very far away and there are many cities in Germany like Hamburg Frankfurt and Munich that are big as well and have a lot of things happening there plus in general if you decide to live in Europe there are many opportunities to travel because Europe is very well connected you can take trains or buses and sometimes you can even find flight tickets
that are cheaper than a restaurant meal for two moving abroad will definitely give you a new perspective on life you will see other cultures mentality and approach to their life it can help you expand and enrich your world view and establish your personal values and this is much harder to do if you never lived outside your hometown it's interesting to see how people change when you just cross a border for example Germans are really keen on obeying the law but on the other side many French people see traffic lights as some kind of decorations for
the street personally what I think is interesting and what I've noticed that a lot of people that decide to study or live abroad see a lot of faults in their country be it because of economic reasons cultural reasons or governmental reasons and on the other side there are people that are born in well-off and well-adjusted countries and these people are very proud of their country and they don't really understand why other people from less successful countries would like to live here and this is not just black and white this is an example of some people
that I've met before and in this case I totally understand if you come to another country you should respect their cultures and their traditions and you should try and learn their language but some people really think that they're better than others because they were just born in a really nice country and last thing that I wanted to discuss in this video is food food of course is a big part of our lives and we need to eat it to survive and different cultures have different food preferences and Cuisine which is not a surprise but somehow
it's always a surprise in real life because when you go to the supermarket you can't seem to find your favorite foods I lived in Netherlands for two years before going for a six months internship in Slovakia and I got used to the fact that a normal Dutch supermarkets I will not find things like kefir or tomato and when I moved to Slovakia I was so over the moon to find these things in a little next to my house of course on the other hand now you get to experience things that you can't find in your
country like a grand selection of soup waffles or a really good cheese so that's basically what I wanted to talk about and good luck [Music] are you filming this this is on on the YouTube yeah yeah hello Erica right this is amazing
