Local or Expat Friends?

I’ve seen people travelling or living abroad who are obsessed with the idea of only having local friends and ignoring anyone from their own species because it taints their “full immersion”. This indeed does lead to full immersion eventually, because over time it is much likelier to lead to you drowning when culture shock hits you and you have no moral support.

Conversely, there are others who only have expat friends and seem to treat the locals like they are a lesser creature who can only be addressed when it is absolutely necessary in a shop, taxi or work environment.

Please, like a million and one other situations, see the benefit of striving for a good balance in your friends in order to keep your sanity and happiness optimum.

Your goal should be to have at least 2 to 3 local friends who can help you understand their culture better and give you a sense of pride in really fitting in somewhere.

But never underestimate the importance of having fellow expat friends. As an Aussie you can renounce all Aussies abroad, an American all Americans, a Frenchy all French, but the expats they are your family when you are away from your family. The local people won’t understand your sense of loss unless they have been in a similar situation before and besides that they will already have a busy week set up full of all their existing commitments and social life. You will be a mere toy for them, but likely nothing of vital importance. But your fellow expats are feeling the same pain as you missing their families, needing someone to whinge to about cultural differences and hopefully have a therapeutic laugh at yourselves and all your silly trivial woes. They are your lifeline.

And maybe after 6 months you might welcome your own countrymen back into your life again, too, when you start to miss all their annoying little quirks…

The other point I wish to make is how silly it is to regret having more expat friends than local friends. I have found that my friendships with fellow expats have become bonds that I know will last a lifetime and ironically, I’ve discovered that I’ve still learnt more or as much from my expat friends about their cultures then I have when I visited their own homes. For example, I lived with a Colombian girl several years ago and 2 years ago I lived in Peru and I still think I understood more about the cultural subtleties of South Americans from our friendship than I did when I lived over there. Think about it… no friendship or exchange is ever lost…