There are big ships, there are small ships, but the best ship is friendship...it's also a complicated ship. The older we get, the more difficult friendship can seem: making friends and maintaining them. Some people say finding a good friend is even harder than finding a romantic partner. Making friends, maintaining friendships, ending friendships...throw in being an expat and you've got an extra layer of fun.
These days I feel like I can group my friends into three major categories: friends from my pre-expat life, my expat tribe, and my local friends (these are my friends who are native to the country I'm living in). My interactions with each group vary and so does how I met them, but all three groups are important and serve to fulfill different needs as an expat.
Pre-Expat Life
I've previously written about the challenges of maintaining this particular group of friends and how these friendships can fall away, you can find that blog here . Even with the challenges of long distance friendships, these friends are important. They keep you connected, living in another country doesn't mean we want to completely lose connection with everyone and everything from our home country. Chances are we still go back to visit, and some expats may even plan unmoving back at some point and having those connections when you get back can be really important in the struggle of your transition in moving back. They've known you longer, all the friends I've maintained in the US are people that I have known for ten years or more at this point. With that longer history in friendship, they've undoubtedly already seen you go through some changes and difficult times, this means they know you better than your newer circles of friends. There will be times when you're homesick, struggling to make a decision when you may prefer to talk to people who have known you longer and a bit better. As an expat you're constantly meeting new people, answering the same questions and having the same basic conversations on repeat as you're trying to build a new friend group...sometimes you just want a break from that.
Expat Tribe
This group of friends are your fellow expats in your country of residence and other friends
who live outside of their home country or have lived abroad and repatriated. I've been lucky enough to live in multiple countries and my expat friends are scattered between the countries where we met, their new country of residence, and their home countries. This group of friends gives you people to hang out with in English (or whatever your native language is) without a cultural differences or barriers (or minimal ones as you may have friends from multiple countries in this group), chances are you have shared interests or hobbies. It's important to have people to interact with in your immediate area who share the same cultural (ish) background and to have a chance to interact outside of work in your native language. If you're always interacting with friends in a language you're learning and with majorly different cultural ideas, it can be very exhausting mentally and end up with you becoming less social as interactions take more out of you. Many of my expat friends I've stayed close with even as we've moved on with our lives and careers. It's nice to have people to talk to who have that same expat experience to bitch about the country we live in on bad days, and who can relate to what we're going through either in our life in our country of residence or during repatriation.
Local Friends
Expat friends are great and it's super easy to just get stuck in the expat bubble, but I also highly recommend making friends who are native to the country where you are living. This group of friends helps bridge the gap between the expat bubble and being more integrated into the culture and country where we are living. These friends are awesome resources for discovering places and activities, helping you accomplish tasks where there is a language barrier, and even provide a source to practice your language skills. But don't rely on these friends just for help, even if they can't relate to things like culture shock and homesickness, but they can help distract you and cheer you up. Both my Chinese and Korean friends would all go shopping or out for a meal with me when the knew I was feeling down.
Work Friends
When I say work friends, I don't just mean being friends with the people at your physical work, but also people who work in the same field as you, but at a different workplace. We all need an outlet to complain to and commiserate with, and who better than people who share our same field of work? They also provide a source of new ideas to incorporate into your work, or even people to bounce ideas for work off of, before you try them out at work.
Building a Friend Circle
With moving to a new country, comes the challenge of finding and building a new support system and circle of friends. Some people relish this, for others like myself, a natural introvert (my students never believe me when I tell them this) it can prove to be a little more challenging. Not only are you starting with scratch making new friends, but there are also some additional challenges to maintaining a friend circle. Where do you find other expats? Or an even bigger challenge, locals? How do you get over the language barrier? Here are some of my go to places and resources for meeting people and making friends.
Meetup Groups
One of the easiest ways to new people is through meetup groups. The benefit of meetup groups is that you can filter by your interests. I actively seek out meetup groups for hiking, photography and surfing (among other interests) as these are hobbies that I enjoy and I have an easier time connecting with people who have a shared interest. meetup groups can be well organized and run..or not. Some attract a mix of expats and locals, and some expats only. In my experience different groups also attract different types of expats, when I lived in Korea there was a particular meetup group that was known as the "party" group, and by my last year in Korea there were a lot of stories about trip leaders sexually assaulting women on overnight trips. I also met some of my best friends and expat tribe through a meetup group...so try them all and pick the best fit for you.
Language Exchange
Another great way meet new people, both other expats and locals is through language exchanges...plus you get the bonus of working on your language skills. When you meet people through a language exchange you at least have the common interest of improving your language skills, and if you're meeting locals, you know they speak some level of English (or your native language). A downside to language exchanges is that they can be poorly organized and run, so if you're actually looking to practice your language skills you may need to visit a few before you find one where language exchange is the main focus. Another potential issue with meeting friends through language exchanges, is that guys (both foreign and local) often use them as a way to meet girls to hook-up with. While this is fine if it's what everyone wants, when you legit just want to be friends and practice the language, and you get hit with unsolicited dick pics and other solicitations...it's very off-putting.
Work
While I personally don't like to make my co-workers my friends (I like a separation between work and the rest of my life) in a new country, where a language barrier is present, work a natural place to find friends. For me, the downside to using work to meet friends, is that there is zero separation between work and your personal life, and depending on how dramatic the people you work with are, it can get dragged into the workplace. It also just bases the friendship on proximity and not on mutual interest, which can make for a weaker friendship.
Recreational Activities
Another place you can meet friends is through your recreational activities (outside of meet up groups) I met several of my Korean friends by going to a climbing gym in Daejeon as well as through photography, running club, volleyball and dance. It provides a stronger base for your friendship and automatically gives you activities and topics for conversation. They'll encourage you to get out and do things even when you don't feel like it, whenever I'd get a text asking to go on a photo walk or meet to climb, I always said yes even when I was super down and they're friends I still meet up with whenever I visit Korea.
Friend Break-Ups
Sometimes the goodship friendship sinks...it can suck, but that's part of life. I consider relationships (all kinds) to be cyclical, which means they go through different cycles, that cycle ends and then a new one begins...or the friendship ends. Working in ESL, people come and go all the time, contracts end and people switch countries, this results in a lot of short-term friendships. Short-term friendships can lead to what I like to call "friendship exhaustion", when you're just like "ugh, I don't want to meet new people or make new friends unless I'm in another country. This is where your pre-expat island friends and local friends are so important to have, because they provide you with some friendship stability and support. Of course there are other reasons for friendships to end; clashes in beliefs, fights, lack of mutual interests, they're just a crap friend etc are all reasons that friendships end. I won't lie, when I feel like the conflict isn't resolvable in a friendship, I'm pretty quick to end things...this may be a result of having adjusted to short-term friendships, and a therapist has suggested that coming from a disengaged family might play into it... and who knows what else. When friendships break-up it can be really tough, regardless of if you've known them a few months or a few years. It happens with expat friends, local friends, and your pre-expat friends. I've gone more in depth to drifting apart and friendship break-ups with my pre-expat friends, you can read more about my take on that here, so we'll focus more on losing local friends and members of your expat tribe.
Local Friends
Something to keep in mind with friends from different cultural backgrounds, is that normal friendship behavior can be very different. I text my western friends all the time, with my Chinese and Korean friends, we typically text when one of us has a question or we're planning to meet. We will comment on each other's insta posts and say things like "oh we should meet for a meal soon", so this is big difference in the friendship dynamic and when these differences are not understood it can lead to the friendship breaking down. Another really common thing I see in the expat/local friend or dynamic is using each other for very specific things like to accomplish tasks or to practice language skills. Both expats and locals are guilty of this, and the other party gets hurt when the perceived "friend" ghosts them or is clearly only using them for specific things. So make sure you're aware of what the friendship culture is like, and try not to take things personally when cultural differences pop up. If you move cities or countries, these relationships may be harder to maintain for similar reasons.
Expat Friends
I've made a lot of expat friends, but one thing I learned, and it was hard at first, is that expat
friends tend to come and go, much like ocean tides. There are a number of reasons for this. I work in ESL and by its very nature people are always cycling in and out, whether it's because their contract is ending, they're moving cities, or even moving countries. You meet people, establish a friendship and then poof they or you move on. But some friendships make it farther than that, some people may even become your close friends before the friendship breaks up. These breakups can be a lot harder, as you often have invested more time and energy into these friendships and developed them to a deeper level. I've found these breakups usually come from some sort of conflict within the friendship; traveling together, difference of beliefs, group projects. Regardless of the reason behind the friendship falling apart, it does suck to lose friends who you are closer with, especially when they are part of your support system.
Am I the best at navigating friendship? Nope. But hopefully this article helps with some of the wtf moments of friendship that happen when navigating the rocky waters of friendship around expat island. I have many groups of friends and they all serve different roles in my life, one group isn't more important than the any of the others, they all support me in different and awesome ways.
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