If settling abroad feels tougher than you expected, you’re in the right place. Moving abroad feels exciting, but the emotional weight often catches people off guard. What we mean by that is that the lonely feeling hits hardest during your first few months in a new country.
This guide shows you practical ways to build genuine comfort during your expat life transition. We’ll cover six areas that work best:
- Your own space setup anywhere
- Building connections with locals
- Blending into your host country naturally
- Daily routines that ground you
- Effective techniques for tough moments
- Celebrating your growth abroad
These methods have helped countless expats settle successfully worldwide. Let’s dive into making your new country feel like home.
Create Your Personal Sanctuary Anywhere
Your new home becomes a sanctuary, as you blend familiar comfort with local characters. The right approach to setting up your space helps the expat life feel more settled from day one.
Stick to these four ways, and any apartment will feel genuinely yours:
Blend Familiar Items with Local Finds
Pack a few treasured pieces from your home country, and mix them with local artwork or textiles. Ask locals about their favourite shopping spots too.
For example, we met James from Canada, who shared that he brought his grandmama’s quilt and paired it with handwoven baskets, which he bought from a local market in Thailand.
Similarly, many people love sharing recommendations, so ask around to discover unique pieces that tell your story. The blend of old and new creates a space that honours your journey.
Start with Two Rooms Only
We recommend focusing on your bedroom and one main living area first. It’s best to leave other rooms for later once you’ve settled completely because two fully functional areas reduce that unsettled feeling significantly. Also, based on your income or your savings, it’s the safest way to go.
Many expats report feeling at home within days rather than weeks when they use this focused method.
Why Lighting Changes Everything
Another common tip you’ll hear from expats is to try buying your own lights. At first, this might sound weird. But hard overhead lights that come with the flat can make any place feel temporary and cold. So instead, add warm table lamps or string lights to create atmosphere.
Make use of your friendly neighbours and talk to them. Locals often know the best shops for affordable options that completely transform your apartment’s mood and energy.
Your Sensory Memory Toolkit
Another obvious advice shared among foreigners is to have a memory toolkit. This toolkit should include candles, music playlists, or familiar meals to help trigger positive memories from your home country.
Try it out and you’ll find your apartment more welcoming after long days of adapting to new routines. Also, simple cooking aromas from your home country can instantly transport you back to comfort and familiarity.
Getting your space right sets the foundation for what comes next. Now you’re ready to connect with people around you.
Finding Your Tribe in Unfamiliar Territory
The toughest part about making friends in different countries isn’t the language barrier or cultural differences. It’s actually the feeling of being the outsider in an established social circle where locals have known each other for years.
A better approach is to look for activities where everyone starts as strangers. For example, fitness classes, cooking workshops, or evening language courses put you on equal footing with locals who are also meeting new people. As a bonus, shared activities give you natural conversation starters right away.
A suggestion we always share with everyone is that it’s always best to do your research before relocating.
Your job offers ready-made conversation topics and shared experiences, too. So, we suggest grabbing lunch with a colleague or joining office social events even when you feel out of place. Many expats report that workplace friendships develop naturally once you make the first move toward connection.
Online communities and expat meetups help you find people who genuinely understand your experience abroad. Building these relationships might take months to develop, but the connections you make often last a lifetime.
Perfect the Art of Cultural Blending
Adapting to your host country doesn’t mean losing who you are. The goal is to find ways to participate in local life while staying true to yourself.
Five practical ways to blend into your new environment include:
- Language basics: Start with greetings, thank you, and please, since even broken attempts at their local language show respect. As a result, locals appreciate the effort you put into speaking with them and often become more helpful with directions or recommendations.
- Food exploration: Try local dishes at markets and restaurants, then ask locals about their family recipes afterwards. Most people love sharing food stories and cooking traditions with curious expats.
- Workplace observation: Watch how colleagues interact, dress codes, and meeting styles before jumping into office culture. Small adjustments like arriving early or bringing coffee can significantly improve your professional relationships over time.
- Community participation: From experience, attending local events even if you don’t understand everything happening around you initially demonstrates respect. Plus, locals notice when expats make the effort to join celebrations.
- Being curious: Who doesn’t enjoy sharing stories? Approach locals and ask them about their costumes, watch them enjoy explaining when met with real interest and respect. Also, your thoughtful questions often lead to deeper conversations and meaningful friendships that last.
Building cultural connections naturally leads to establishing consistent daily patterns that ground you.
Build Daily Anchors That Keep You Grounded
Daily anchors in a new country feel like building a bridge between your old life and your current reality. When cultural differences and language barriers exhaust your mental energy, familiar routines restore that sense of control you’ve been missing abroad.
Your morning routine sets the tone for everything that follows afterwards. For example, making tea the way your grandmother taught you, doing yoga, or reading news from your home country all help start your day right. As a result, morning habits give you something reliable to count on every single day.
Once evening arrives, familiar activities offer another chance to reconnect with yourself. For instance, cook traditional meals, video call friends back home, or take walks while listening to podcasts. Simple habits like writing in a journal create pockets of comfort during transition periods.
As time passes, you might add local ingredients to familiar recipes or discover neighborhood spots that become part of your daily walk. Personal rituals evolve naturally while keeping you grounded in your expat life.
Building daily patterns prepares you for handling the inevitable difficult days that come with living abroad.
Handle Tough Days Like a Seasoned Expat
Difficult days happen to every single expat, despite how well-prepared or positive they are about living abroad. The difference between struggling and succeeding often comes down to recognising tough moments and responding quickly with proven techniques.
Effective ways to handle challenging periods include:
Your Personal Warning Signs Matter Most
Some common warning signs include unusual tiredness, irritation over small things, or wanting to avoid social situations completely. Since expat life stress shows up differently for everyone, learning your patterns helps tremendously with early intervention and prevention.
Quick Mood Boosters Work Instantly
Simple actions like calling family or friends from your home country, taking a long walk outdoors, or buying something special from a local market can lift your spirits instantly.
For instance, Sara, an international fresher, would make a quick 15-minute phone call with family or explore a new neighbourhood on foot to shift her mindset completely. This proves that movement and connection with others help with mood uplift faster than simply waiting it out.
Professional Support Has Its Place
Getting help becomes important if tough days start happening more frequently than usual. Fortunately, many destinations offer mental health resources designed specifically for international residents dealing with transition challenges abroad.
Developing coping strategies builds confidence for celebrating all the progress you’ve made in your new country.
Celebrating Your New Chapter Abroad
Look how far you’ve come since those first overwhelming days of your relocation. It is important for you to remember that every small win counts and that each achievement builds on the last one.
We all know that moving abroad has changed you in ways you probably didn’t anticipate. As a result, you’ve built resilience, learned to adapt quickly, and gained cultural insights that enrich your perspective on life and the world around you.
Your expat journey represents courage, growth, and the willingness to accept change. If you’re planning your next adventure or want to inspire others to take the leap, Run Away Squirrels offers travel stories and practical advice.
After all, new experiences create positive change when you step outside familiar comfort zones.