I was only 21 when I became an immigrant. In 2015 I packed my stuff and traveled across South America by bus, landing more than a thousand miles from home, all by myself (I’ll write more about this soon). Three years have passed and the thrill has slowly faded — at first you may look at the city with the eyes of a tourist, but after so many subway trips you end up looking right past the Casa Rosada with plain indifference. Despite that, you know you’ll never be completely comfortable — five minutes into the conversation and someone will notice your accent, and you’ll be invariably interrogated about when, why and how you made such a drastic decision. There will always be a joke, a strange word, or a reference you don’t understand. And yet, when you visit your family back home, you feel you don’t quite belong anymore — being an immigrant certainly divides your life in two chapters.
Starting over can be an incredible journey: you learn a lot about people, cultures, and yourself. You learn a new language, meet people so different from you — and yet so similar. There are studies showing that living in a foreign country can make you smarter and more creative. I hope to share a few things about my own experience as an immigrant and perhaps motivate some of you who dream about studying abroad, getting a better job, or starting a family in a more stable, pacific country.
When you move to another country…
Your priorities change
Before moving to Argentina, I had a small, but comfortable apartment, a regular job that paid the bills and a group of friends that I used to hang out with. My top priorities were being financially independent, living alone and leading a calm life. While many of my friends were partying and dating, I was working hard and saving money. However, my material achievements didn’t bring me much satisfaction — I was only 20, but tired, bored and unhappy. I didn’t like the city I lived in, I was worried about the political and economic crisis in Brazil, and I hated my job.
When I finally decided to move, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep the same living standards as an immigrant — I was willing to share an apartment with other people, I was willing to accept some part-time job while I studied and gained some experience, and, most importantly, I was willing to place more value on my experiences over the comfortable things money could buy. This taught me to appreciate things like spending an afternoon in a museum or having coffee with a friend and talking about all sorts of things just to practice the new language. Even with much less money, I have a better time here in Buenos Aires than in my old city. I found out that I valued traveling, walking around the city, talking to people and reading books more than saving every cent I could and being afraid of spending my time in anything other than work.
I didn’t like to try new things before, or meeting new people. I would stick to my old friends and I used to consider myself a shy person. I didn’t have this option when I was in a country where I didn’t know anyone and didn’t even speak the language. I had to talk to ask for things, I had to eat food that I would’n otherwise eat, and I had to redesign my routine based on the new culture.
I’ve also learned to prioritize things that I came to know only after moving. In Brazil, I wasn’t aware of the stress caused by the urban violence. I live in a much safer city now, and I can walk home from a bar at night, or pick up my phone while on the subway, or leave my windows open when it’s too hot — things I never thought were possible, and that I’m not willing to give up now that I have them. When you move to another country, you learn what is really essential and non-negotiable in your life and you get to understand that everything else is replaceable.
You get to challenge your own prejudices and stereotypes…
When you grow up within a community and you spend your whole life in it, it’s easy to take a lot of things for granted — you consider your lifestyle, your religion, your tastes and preferences as the norm, and you don’t really have your assumptions confronted. I grew up in a small, conservative town, but I used to see myself as prejudice-free and open-minded — that is, until I moved to another country and realized that what was “normal” for me was extraordinary or weird for everyone else.
In Brazil we have some extreme concepts of hygiene, for example. We don’t ever touch food with our hands, food is not displayed without protection at the bakery or grocery store, and at the restaurant you never give money directly to the person that serves you the food. So I was unsurprisingly scared to walk into a panadería and see all the facturas exposed to the public and served by people not wearing gloves.
It also happened with the people — in my hometown it’s very rude to ask personal questions to a stranger, or to complain publicly about your job. At first I had the impression that people in Buenos Aires were nosy and lazy, because in my first 5 minutes talking to a person they would ask me if I had a boyfriend, if I lived alone and what does my mother think of me living abroad, and people would say shamelessly that they didn’t like their jobs, or that they didn’t feel like working today.
All those examples were shocking for me at first, but instead of panicking and coming back to my comfort zone, I tried to view it objectively. They were not dirty, lazy or nosy — they just had different standards. For them, it is friendly to ask personal questions or to bond through complaining about work the same way we complain about the weather in Brazil.
If you decide to live the adventure of moving to another country, you have to be open to challenge many things that you consider right and normal. Every culture is different and finds different solutions for the same problems. I learned to respect the way people think and act here, and now I understand that they don’t mean to insult me when I ask a question and someone tells me to search for it on Google, and I don’t get offended when I expect a “thank you” but only get an “ok” (I’ll write more about the cultural differences I experience in Argentina in another article). I still keep my small town habit of helping someone who asks for directions and saying thanks to the cashier, though.
You don’t have to think and act exactly like the locals, but it’s important to understand their context and respect their culture. Don’t ever say that their habits or foods are “gross”, and don’t get insulted if they respond differently than you’d expect. Living abroad is challenging prejudices and stereotypes and giving room for second, third and tenth impressions.
…And find out that people are more similar than you’d assumed
One of the beautiful, unexpected things that I learned living abroad is that this experience is not all cultural shock and differences. My first home in Buenos Aires was an apartment that I shared with foreign students and immigrants. They came from all Latin America and sometimes from Europe and the United States. They all wanted to know what the others knew or thought about their countries, they wanted to know if you could “guess” their nationality by their accent, and they would ask questions such: Do I look Brazilian? Do Colombians have a good reputation here? Oh, you’ve spent your vacations in Chile? What did you think, were we friendly? Do you think our country is beautiful?
The people I met in Argentina would never understand why a person would leave such a beautiful country to live here — they would complain about the exact same things Brazilian people do in Brazil: our politicians are not trustworthy, everything is expensive, we need more jobs! Brazil must be better than that. After all, the grass is always greener on the other side.
Before moving to Argentina I didn’t feel Latin American. I reckon Brazil is somewhat isolated from other countries in the continent for its language and size, and I didn’t realize everything I had in common with other Latin Americans, and how much history our countries shared. We all remember the dictatorships that killed and tortured so many people just a few decades ago, we all struggle to build our new democracies and to establish peace and safety for everyone, we all suffer from social, economic and political problems that plague our continent since the European colonization. We all have hope.
I learned that people are not their government, they are not their economies, they are not some random numbers — 80% Christian, 90% white, HDI of 0.827. You can’t learn everything about a country by reading about it on Wikipedia — you have to talk to the people, hear their stories, their opinions, their dreams for the future. In the end you’ll notice that the exotic stranger looks a lot like you.
You become really good at dealing with frustration
Expat depression is a thing. A 2011 study found that expats are more than twice as likely to suffer from anxiety and depression than the general population. I had heard stories about immigrants developing depression, gaining weight, or simply missing their families and friends too deeply, so I was aware this could happen to me as well. However, I thought since I was choosing to leave my country, since I was not fleeing from war, since I was already living in another state away from my family, that it wasn’t going to be so serious. I was wrong.
It’s easy to get caught up in unrealistic expectations when you’re in a new country. You expect things to be fun, exciting and nice all the time. And when the fun doesn’t come, the frustration takes place. I thought I was going to meet people and go to parties and talk about my adventures the whole night, but when someone asked me a question I couldn’t produce more than a few simple words and I’d feel stupid and go home and spend the rest of the night studying grammar books. I thought it was going to be easy to make new friends, but a lot of the time people just saw me as “The Brazilian Girl” and didn’t care about getting to know me — they wanted to know about the best beach in Brazil to go to on their next vacation, or they wanted to know how to say a dirty word in Portuguese, and little else.
After a while I felt very isolated — I wouldn’t go to the parties because I was ashamed of my accent and lack of vocabulary, I wouldn’t even try to make friends anymore because I was tired of talking about Brazilian culture and answering the same questions all over again. The anxiety and depression came so gradually that I didn’t even recognize them when I was unable to wake up in the morning and go to work, and started failing the subjects at school. It took a lot of work to understand my expectations and manage my frustration, and to finally be able to not underestimate the difficulties of living in a foreign country.
It’s a daily job to remind yourself that when you’re an immigrant you’ll have to work, study, go through the ups and downs of the politics and economy of your new country, do the dishes and take the subway. It’s not a vacation, and it’s not going to be fun all the time.
No matter how hard you miss home, or how difficult it is to learn the language, don’t give up. Keep trying to make friends, to express yourself, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes and ask for help.
If you think you might be depressed, seek professional help. Whatever you do, don’t ignore your own feelings and remember why you moved here in the first place — your dreams, your passion, your future.
You never stop adapting and learning
The good thing about overcoming fear and frustration is that you learn to make room for a lot of new skills. Nowadays I speak fluent Spanish, but there’s seldom any day I spend without learning a new word or idiom. My fear of making mistakes became a passion for expanding my vocabulary and my knowledge about my new home. If I was afraid to speak at a party because I didn’t understand the jokes or the references, now I enjoy reading history books and talking to people about their local idols and memes.
If you moved to a new country in your 20s, you have at least two decades to catch up, so don’t waste any time and start talking to people about their heroes and holidays, their favorite TV shows when they were kids, their recommendations on local music, movies, books, comics and news. You’re going to be more prepared to interact with people, to participate in the community, to keep up with the local life, and you’re going to be surprised by the beauty and quality of all this new content.
Local people are always surprised when I show that I value and respect their culture, when I know who Perón was or when I use some expression that only porteños use. For me it’s really important to never stop paying attention and being amazed by everything. In a way, Buenos Aires is always going to be new and exciting for me if I keep looking for the small details.
When you move to a new country, you’ll be a tourist for a while — but not for long! Don’t limit yourself to tourist attractions and activities: explore, get to know the real places real people go to eat, party and buy. Keep learning, keep adapting, and never let yourself be completely comfortable.
You begin to value your own country and culture more
Another interesting thing that happens when you try so hard to adapt and fit in: you see your own national identity and culture in a stronger and clearer way. After a couple of years speaking another language every day, I finally accepted that I was always going to have an accent. And instead of feeling ashamed, I started seeing it as a part of my identity, as something that made me special: after all, it shows where I come from and how much I’ve accomplished learning a new language.
When you start missing the food, the people, the way things were back home, you also start valuing them more. Sometimes when you leave your country you do so with a broken heart: you remember the economy wrecked, the political tension, the lack of jobs and opportunities. But eventually the positive memories come back: for me, it’s the Brazilian humor— the memes, the edgy jokes, the way we can see the irony through everything and not take ourselves so seriously all the time. I respect and appreciate that more than ever and I’m proud I have it in me.
There is a study that shows that living abroad makes you have a clearer sense of self, that is, that your beliefs about yourself are clearly and confidently defined, consistent and stable over time. According to the authors,
“The longer people live abroad, the more self-discerning reflections they accumulate and, as a result, the more likely they are to develop a better understanding of themselves and have increased clarity about career decision-making.”
For many people being away from home leads to a sad homesickness, but I think it’s more productive to analyze the things you miss and use this to learn about what makes your country different and cool, and which of these differences makes you you. I’ll never stop being Brazilian, so I might as well learn to be proud and cool about it.
You feel proud of chasing your dreams despite all the obstacles
Finally, the most important lesson I’ve learned as an immigrant is that I have a choice. Sometimes you’re not lucky enough to have been born in a place that reflects your values and beliefs, or that gives you the opportunities you seek for your life. Fortunately, you can make the decision to find or build that place for yourself. I’m proud of myself for having the courage to leave home, follow my heart, take risks and build a new life from scratch. How many spend their whole lives afraid of changing, in a place they don’t like because they feel they don’t have a choice?
When I watch the beautiful Buenos Aires skyline through my window at night, I think to myself: I chose this place. I know how I got here, and why I stay. And if there’s a day I feel like moving again, and starting all over, I know that I can. And there isn’t anything more important than knowing who you are and what you are capable of.
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