10 Ways to Deal With Homesickness While Abroad

Living or studying abroad is great, but not every minute is spent seeing the Eiffel Tower or visiting the Coloseum in Rome. There are bad days, and when living abroad dealing with homesickness is one of the issues you or a friend may deal with. Here we have ten ways to help cope with homesickness while studying abroad.
This video can help with exchange students, college students studying abroad, executives and families living abroad or even university students who have moved away from home for the first time.
Filmed in Lucca, Italy
Copyright Mark Wolters 2012

[elifaktepe]

I would never imagine that I would get homesicked. I'm 24 yrs old and studying my master's degree in Spain, thousands of kms away from home. Even though I studied and worked a lot for being in this master's degree programme in Spain and even though I love Spain so much, It's been 1 month and I feel a huge lack of energy, willing towards nearly everything and i'm dealing with missing home&family&friends&my home city Istanbul&my culture, loneliness and a feeling of alienizing. I'm a solo backpacker and I have travelled a lot by myself abroad many times, I even travelled in whole Spain and loved it a lot. However, "moving" is different than travels. While travelling you don't miss your home because it still remains as your usual reality and a base on your psychology to stand upon. Moving alone to a new country and fighting everthing alone, struggling to communicate in the local language and with loneliness makes you feel so down and push you away to your apartment flat constantly. I can't even study and focus on why i'm here. It's hard. And wondering if it's permanent or not...

[woltersworld]

It is worth it. It is DEFINITELY WORTH IT! The homesickness only happens occasionally, and for completely random reasons. For me it was missing the leaves turn in fall (silly isn't it?) but the homesickness is something that you can deal with (that is why i have the video). If you are going abroad in high school you should be fine as the students will be "fascintated" by you :) so take every opportunity you have to meet people and do things with them.

[woltersworld]

Yeah, i know, i had similar issues when i lived abroad. just having that one 'connection' around your age makes the experience so much easier and more fulfilling. have a great time at your new host family! hope the videos help out some! all the best!
Mark

[woltersworld]

Glad I could help. It has happened to me a few times on my travels so I am glad that I can help others. All the best!

[woltersworld]

I am glad I could help. The November homesickness blahs hit me a few times on my travels and it is tough. I hope some of these things will help...
Thanks again for sharing! Mark

[DrLynzable]

Thank you so, so much for this video Mark - it's awesome! I moved to New Zealand from the UK just over a month ago and homesickness is starting to hit big time but your tips have really helped - it's amazing how much better I feel already just knowing that it's normal! :) THANK YOU! :)

[hilslamer]

This list is priceless to me - I moved abroad recently, and after the exhileration of all of it wore off I fell into many of the traps that you describe here...very glad I found this and I will be passing it on/rewatching as time goes on.

Thankyou for taking the time to compose it and elaborate on it in video.

[lergray]

it's a great advice to talk to people from day one. I always wait bc I'm shy and I always regret it later

[alexkelly]

Thank you! I'm away from home for the first time by myself and this helped me snap out of my home sickness a bit.

[TranquilColors]

Thank you for making this im just starting college in LA and im from Texas (not really Abroad). I have never been independent in life until right now and im scared shitless (not eating and crying) im gonna try to do my best. 

[Jewzilian]

Omg that lady at 5:01. I'm dying.

[luckycatluckycat]

Even having a close love relationship in the new country I live (6000 miles away from home) for already 5 years, I’m still homesick and suffering. I go back home every three months for a week or so, but every time I return abroad and my cats are wining because I’m leaving again, I have such terrible remorse and I keep on suffering because I know that I don’t want to leave my love relationship either and for some reasons it’s impossible to expatriate my love to my home. So... unfortunately these suggested solutions really don’t work for some cases.

[trinhanh]

thanks bro I just got back from Vietnam to visit my relative but I miss them

[soshified]

Hey Walter thanks for making this video man! I'm spreading my wings next year and leaving my University here in New Zealand to go on a full 11 month exchange to Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto Japan. I've never left New Zealand before and home is only a 3 hour drive away at the moment. I'm absolutely terrified of going from a population of 300 000 in Wellington  to millions in Kyoto. There is some really cool advice in this video! Every little bit helps.

[adrianedawndawn]

Great advice. I like how you keep it practical and to date.

[unknownunknown]

After watching this video, I have a feeling Yvonne won't want to come back to Singapore as often or anymore! Anyway, thanks for these tips and thanks for sharing Yvonne! Will definitely share this video to my friends who will be or are studying abroad.

[hafizalsree]

Thanks.. im from Singapore studying Arabic in Yemen which is a big difference in environment and hope this really helped as it is a rural city.. This is my 4th day here and i was not very active than at home..

[Thosteng]

i was abroad for 10 months but when my family visited me for a week and that was the worst homesickness ever when they left. but i wish you would have released this video a year ago

[SINzecha]

Even though this helps, I really can't get over the fact that I go to boarding school halfway across the world from my family and my hometown. I've experienced homesickness before, several times, and I can't seem to get over it.

[janburn]

Fortunately, in all my overseas travels & sojourns, I don't believe I've ever suffered from homesickness, even though I usually did not take much in the way of mementos from home. But I did do a lot of the other things you talked about - automatically making local friends right from the start, & I rarely had contact with any of my friends & family back home - apart from the odd postcard, or 'phone call. Maybe I was just lucky - or maybe it was because I threw myself so whole-heartedly into that overseas experience.