Some of you may have seen this before, but it still holds true, every Summer, when many of my friends leave, ready for the next steps on their adventure.

One of the hardest things about being an expat is seeing your “new” friends pack up and go.  We all know this is inevitable, from the first day that we meet, but still, it’s hard.

Expats quickly become fast friends with each other–sometimes with the only thing in common, at first, being that we have been relocated to a foreign country and almost overnight, our world has been turned upside down.

We are here together, struggling and determined to make this “thing” work, not only for us, but for our families.

We form an indescribable bond.

We remind each other to keep our sense of humor as we try to learn a new language and do everything that our family is used to us doing,  in a land where we often suddenly feel like we don’t know how to do anything anymore.

We smile whenever we see our new friends and feel a genuine sense of relief, calm and happiness when in their presence. We so appreciate them on a level we may not have ever experienced before, with our other friends back home. Our friends here become our anchors and help us stay grounded and remember who we are, no matter how bad a day we’ve had.

We meet for coffee and drinks, offer words of support, give needed hugs, offer solicited and unsolicited advice  and offer a shoulder to cry on, when needed. We become eachother’s family and become a source of strength and support.

When a friend leaves, we may grieve for a few days, we may suddenly be reminded again of that feeling of “uncomfortableness” that we first felt when we moved here, we may mope, we may complain and even feel sorry for ourselves.  But, we pick ourselves up and get on with it, because we know that’s what our friend would tell us to do, if she were here.

We learn great lessons from our expat friends–to have as much fun as possible (no matter how challenging a situation might seem), to really value our friends and appreciate them and to cherish and be grateful for the time we have together. And, we take these lessons on with us to wherever our next adventure takes us.
Thank you friends.

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