Homesickness For International Students

Living and studying abroad is an exciting and enriching opportunity. Studying abroad comes with a wide range of emotions such as happiness, sadness, excitement and homesickness. Homesickness is a serious problem for international students. It might not be serious or they may not notice, but it is normal to be homesick. Homesickness is the strong wish to be at home – to be surrounded by familiar things. Typical symptoms of homesickness can be sadness, crying, and lack of appetite or a general feeling of weariness. The reason of it is simply the lost familiarity . Going to another country, especially for a study exchange, holds a lot of new challenges: languages difficulties, other university systems, an unknown environment

When most international students come abroad, there are no families and no friends. They are alone, so international students have to do everything by themselves. Also, sometimes it is difficult to contact with families and friends because of the time difference. At first, international students feel very alone. For that reason, they will try to make friends abroad. Some people can make friends easily, but some people cannot, because all people have different personalities. Accordingly, sometimes people do not match other people. If international students cannot make friends easily, or if they have some problems about relationships with friends, they cannot feel comfortable. Then international students may cry or want to go back their country. These are sympathy of homesickness. Thus, international students can become homesick as soon as they live

This one should be easy. Don’t spend hours sitting in front of your laptop looking at Facebook photos of your friends and your family. Staying in contact with them is one thing. Constantly wishing you were back with them is another.

Discover your new home town! Beforehand you can buy a travel guidebook about the town and region where you have your study exchange. Make a plan which museums, places and sights you wish to visit and make sure that you have a little highlight every day. Your study experience abroad is your chance to discover truly another culture and other people. And don’t forget your camera to show all your impressions to your family back home!

Look for students’ organisations at your host university! They organize a lot of welcome events, cultural activities and parties for guest students. This way you get in touch with open-minded national students and have a great possibility to make friends from all over the world.

Allow your parents to send you a parcel! After the first weeks and having mastered all the start-up difficulties it is a very comforting feeling to get something from “home” like you favourite chocolate or a newspaper. Ask your parents to prepare such a little nice present for you and send it to you after a couple of