Coming and Going…
It’s great exploring and enjoying a new culture but often hard to feel settled as your time there is limited (sometimes you’re only there a few months!). Just when you’ve got into a routine, made friends and got used to the weird food, it’s time to leave and say goodbye to everything once more! Just as the strange becomes familiar, you either move on to another place or back home where you must once more become accustomed to mundane home-life without the intrigues that come with living in a new culture.
Furry Friends
While nowadays it’s easy to call or text friends and family to stay in touch when living far away, there is no way to interact with your beloved pets. There’s nothing quite like snuggling up to a furry friend or having a reason to get out and about on walks to explore your local area. In the streets, you seem surrounded by other people and their animals while you must suffer without for months on end. Getting back home, they are the first thing you want to see after months of opening your front door with no noisy greetings and happy furry faces!
Exploring
Wherever you have travelled in the world, it is impossible to truly experience a place and culture without truly living there. After being a tourist and learning about the history and geography of a place, you are then able to experience the people and traditions that make a place feel homely and familiar the longer you live in a place, spending your everyday life in a new and interesting place. You don’t have to worry about having time to fit in all the places you want to visit, with months and months to take in every aspect of where you’re staying, take your time!
Languages
Even if you’re moving to an English-speaking country such as Australia or the USA, you will learn new figures of speech and words that you didn’t know before. The positives of moving to a foreign country that speaks a different language is even greater, as learning a language has been proven to be great for brain growth and those with a second language are incredibly popular amongst employers. Learning a new language while living abroad also gives you the opportunity to speak to millions of people whose customs and ideas were perhaps before inaccessible to you.
Cultivate a global perspective
After recent political events taking place both in the UK and abroad, many people are worried that we are becoming more inward looking and ignorant of other people and cultures. By moving abroad and living like a local, you can take a more objective view on ideas that may have been inherited from your home country. By developing new perspectives through meeting foreigners and experiencing perhaps completely different ideals from your own, you open your mind, making you more aware of the reasons behind other people’s viewpoints and traditions as a nation or individual.
Sources
http://www.fishforthoughts.com/2016/05/10-reasons-why-you-should-date-gi…
http://www.dafigo.com/blogs/the-importance-of-speaking-multiple-languages-in-business/