Ol`gita Major: International Economic Relations Status: Workygirl I am fond of chocolates, flowers, friends, loud music, watching movies, taking pictures and traveling!!!

Is a Life Abroad for You?
Olya Bezvushko

Not everybody can live abroad. Some people find it difficult to stay away from family, friends and home, and the comfortable familiarity of home is so painful that it sours their entire stay. On the contrary, there are people, who thieve on the new challenges, novelty, get satisfied by overcoming new problems and are awarded with a sense of personal growth and achievement.

Before you make a final decision to go, try to determining the motives, why you want to go. Weigh up what might appear to be difficult about living abroad, what you might be missing and how you will benefit of staying abroad. If you are prepared, problems won’t bother you and keep from enjoying the foreign culture. In the preparation process, you may find that you are not yet ready to stay abroad for an extended period, saving yourself an unpleasant experience.

So, why do you want to go? The more positive reasons you have for going the more likely you’ll make a success of it. If you are volunteering to teach in a remote Himalayan village for two years because a relationship has just broken up, then you are going for the wrong reasons and will probably regret your decision. If all you can think of is how much you hate your job, your boss, and the weather, then you are likely to be as unhappy in your new home as you are now.

What benefits are you planning to get from your trip? The more you want to get out of your time abroad, the more focused you will be when you are away. The inevitable problems will be minor distractions from your ultimate goal, which can range from the purely material, such as making money, to the completely spiritual.
If you are going abroad to work, then work experience, new challenges, the chances of professional improvement, as well as a good pay packet, are all valid reasons to go. As a student, you might find a degree earned abroad gives you an edge over stay-at-home graduates. On the personal side, you'll gain a new perspective on the simplest everyday tasks when you carry them out in a new language. As a result, you'll be more confident and capable.

Check your expectations, either they are realistic. It's easy to let your imagination run wild as you imagine long, lazy days by the swimming pool or long, leisurely dinners under the stars with a bottle of local wine. But is it realistic? So, are you really going to be fluent in English after one years? Will you really have saved enough to be able to study in the USA? Are you really going to be able to get up at dawn everyday to do your extra homework? Make sure your list of expectations doesn’t resemble a list of New Year's resolutions that won't even last the first week.

What can be foreseen? Don't go too far with this or you may find you'll be too nervous to leave home. Most problems stem from differences in culture and language, so if you know what to expect beforehand, you will be more likely to avoid big problems.Besides, expect the unexpected  and keep in your mind that unanticipated events make the most memorable experiences.

Could You Really Live Away From Home? Examine your lifestyle and identify those aspects of it that you would find difficult to change or do without completely. Is your social life tightly bound with a club, sport, or hobby that isn't likely to exist in your new destination?

How you feel about being a foreigner? Do you mind being stared at? If you are away from tourist areas and obviously not a local, then you may be of considerable interest. Depending on how much other entertainment there is around, you may be the focus of attention.

Finally, track down some people who have spent time in your proposed destination. Internet chat rooms on travel web sites are good places to start. Get some idea of what they experienced and whether or not you could cope. Don't be put off by the possible difficulties and hardships, but be prepared for them and have strategies at hand to deal with them. This way you'll be better able to appreciate what should be one of the most fruitful times of your life.

Be careful! Everything may turn to be like in my case, you may like living abroad so much that you won’t like even to think about going home.