Moving on after moving in

[Sunflower77]

Hello,

I am a newly wed who recently moved to US. I am from Delhi and I miss everything about India, :? ...well not everything. I was wondering if any of you out there want to share your experiences or stories about your move to a new country and starting a new life here away from family.

I thought this would be a nice place to share some of the things we all went through or are going through in a new country - the culture shock, home sickness, loss of identity etc. etc. and the ways each of us are dealing with it.

Sunflower

[malsi]

hmm..quite an interesting topic..but i guess we already have a topic which is similar to this.. " Indians living abroad"...

[Sunflower77]

yes, but lot of them that I have read are talking of "earning money" abroad. There is more to life than just earning money. I haven't ready any that talks of adjusting in a new place, making friends, reaching out, or how did wives who were homemakers got used to their new environment, how did their kids feel about the move etc.

[Anoushka]

Sunflower: I guess this is the first time you moved out of Dellhi...

I am not sure if I can add much to this because my dad's transferable job brought us to different places in India :) So I had learnt moving on at a very young age!

The first time I moved to a different state, I cried every single day because I had no friends in school, I didn't understand the language they were speaking, I had Hindi in school and I wasn't upto speed with the rest of the class, etc.

Slowly but steadily my Dad made me realise that I had to make an effort to move on. I could write to my friends in Madras, and I had to make new friends in my new school as a part of that effort! Actually I should add that because we were away from the rest of the family, we (my parents, brother and myself) got to spend a lot of time together.

It was odd for me because I was the only one speaking a different language... so what did I do? I found a few students who had just moved to the school because their parents who were working abroad and wanted their children to move to India.

I moved to a good few places after that.... My rule is that I go out and try to make friends. There will be people who have something in common with you, find them!

Go to the library, meet people, enroll yourself in a class... libraries generally organise different stuff, so go and find out if there is anything of interest to you.

If your husband was living in US even before you got married he would have friends, invite them over, have parties at home, if you can't cook then have it as a potluck!

Go to the gym - another good place to meet people!

If you are skilled then try and teach children around.. like if you are good in music then start a music class... you can teach Indian cooking for adults, ... you can register in the local library/community centre to do this... I am not sure how it works in US but I guess it shouldn't be tough to find out!

In summer find things to do outside like gardening, picnics with family and friends, etc

And ofcourse this is the best time to get to know your husband :) Spend loads of time with him, find things to do together and you will see that you have no time to think about what you are missing!

[Sunflower77]

Anoushka, thanks for sharing. I am doing some of the things that you talked about, especially reaching out and making friends.

[Anoushka]

Sunflower: Check http://forumhub.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=3944&start=0 a thread on what people miss living abroad.. maybe you can find somemore ideas here

[Sunflower77]

Thanks, Anoushka.

:)