Moving overseas looks fantastic on Instagram.
New city.
New food.
New friends.
A beach nobody back home can believe is part of your normal weekend.
A café you somehow make look as though you discovered it yourself.
And, eventually, the obligatory caption about leaving your comfort zone.
I understand the attraction.
I left Vietnam and built a life in Australia. Years later, I found myself doing it again in Spain.
Both experiences gave me opportunities I would not trade.
But living internationally has also taught me that there is a version of moving abroad that rarely makes it into the photos.
It is the version where you don't understand why everyone is laughing.
Where a simple administrative task consumes half a day.
Where you know exactly what you want to say but cannot say it with the same intelligence, humour or personality you have in your first language.
Where you are surrounded by people and still feel strangely alone.
Where you suddenly become very aware that almost everything you considered "normal" was actually cultural.
That is the culture shock I wish we talked about more.
The strange feeling of becoming less competent overnight
One of the most uncomfortable parts of moving abroad is how quickly ordinary competence can disappear.
At home, you know how things work.
You know how to open a bank account.
How to find a doctor.
What people mean when they say certain things.
How formal to be with someone older than you.
How to complain politely.
How to make a joke.
How early is early.
How late is rude.
How much silence is normal.
Then you move.
Suddenly, you are asking questions about things you have been doing successfully for years.
Which document do I need?
Do I need an appointment?
Why does this office close now?
Was that person being rude to me, or just direct?
Was I too formal?
Was I not formal enough?
Did they actually invite me, or were they just being polite?
You haven't become less intelligent.
You have lost the shortcuts that come from knowing a culture.
And rebuilding them takes energy.
Australia: relaxed does not mean culturally simple
Australia can appear relatively easy to adapt to from the outside.
English is widely spoken.
The culture is informal.
People are often friendly.
Workplaces can feel relaxed compared with more hierarchical cultures.
Someone senior might tell you to call them by their first name. A stranger might ask, "How are you?" without expecting your life story.
Australian universities themselves prepare international students for some of these differences: informal communication, unfamiliar social behaviour, different services, homesickness and the strange feeling of not always understanding what people mean even when you technically understand the language.
That distinction matters.
Speaking English and understanding Australians are not always the same skill.
There is humour.
Sarcasm.
Shortened words.
Small talk.
Different expectations around independence.
And a very Australian ability to make something sound completely unimportant while actually expecting you to deal with it properly.
"Yeah, no worries."
Sometimes there are worries.
You learn.
Then there is the loneliness nobody photographs
A beautiful place does not automatically make you feel that you belong there.
This was something I later understood much more deeply through my work with international students.
You can be grateful to be overseas and homesick at the same time.
You can be surrounded by opportunity and still have a difficult week.
You can have friends and still miss the people who knew you before you had to explain yourself.
International living often creates a strange double expectation.
People at home may imagine you are having the time of your life.
So when you call them, sometimes you feel guilty complaining.
You chose this.
You were lucky enough to go.
Look at where you live.
What could possibly be wrong?
Quite a lot, occasionally.
Missing home does not mean moving abroad was a mistake.
Sometimes it simply means home mattered.
Missing home does not mean moving abroad was a mistake. Sometimes it simply means home mattered.
You also lose the version of yourself other people already understood
This part is difficult to explain until you experience it.
At home, people know your context.
They understand your humour.
Your education means something to them.
They recognise the companies you have worked for.
They know roughly where you fit.
Move to another country and much of that social context disappears.
You introduce yourself again.
And again.
And again.
You explain your qualifications.
You explain where your city is.
You explain why you moved.
You explain your name.
You explain your accent.
You explain your visa.
You explain that the organisation on your CV is actually quite well known where you came from.
Sometimes moving internationally feels like becoming a junior version of yourself while still carrying all the experience of the person you were before.
That can be frustrating professionally as well as personally.
Spain taught me that moving countries doesn't get easier just because you've done it before
After years in Australia, I might have assumed that another international move would be easier.
In some ways, it was.
You know that confusion passes.
You know friendships take time.
You know a country gradually changes from somewhere you are visiting into somewhere you actually live.
But experience does not remove difference.
Spain has its own rhythm.
Social life is important.
Meal times run later.
Conversation can be more spontaneous and overlapping.
Spanish matters enormously if you want to build a life beyond the international bubble.
And the everyday systems are, naturally, Spanish systems.
The first international move teaches you how to adapt.
The second reminds you that adaptation is not copy and paste.
What helped you belong in Australia will not automatically make you belong in Spain.
You have to become a beginner again.
Language is about more than vocabulary
This has probably been one of the most humbling lessons of international life.
Language determines much more than whether you can order food or complete a form.
It affects personality.
In your strongest language, you know how to be funny.
Diplomatic.
Persuasive.
Precise.
Sarcastic.
Warm.
Professional.
You know how to soften a disagreement.
How to interrupt without sounding rude.
How to tell someone you disagree without making it a confrontation.
When you operate in a language you are still learning, that range becomes smaller.
You may know exactly what you think and still sound simpler than you are.
People sometimes confuse language ability with intelligence, confidence or personality.
The person speaking slowly in front of you may be much funnier, sharper or more articulate in another language.
International living teaches you to remember that.
It certainly taught me to listen differently.
Friendship becomes surprisingly intentional
At home, relationships often grow around structures that already exist.
School.
University.
Family.
Work.
Childhood friends.
Friends of friends.
Move overseas and you discover that adult friendship requires logistics.
You have to show up.
Join something.
Send the message.
Accept invitations even when staying home would be easier.
Meet someone for coffee and then actually contact them again.
This is one reason I became so interested in community engagement during my years in Australia.
Community is not simply about putting a group of people in the same room.
It is about creating enough connection that people begin to feel they have permission to belong.
International students understand this intuitively.
The difference between knowing people and feeling connected to people can determine whether a new country starts feeling like home.
The Instagram version also hides bureaucracy
Nobody uploads:
Day 47: I successfully obtained the correct appointment.
There is no cinematic reel of somebody trying to understand residency paperwork.
Nobody poses beside the printer after finally producing the correct combination of documents.
But administration is part of migration.
Visas.
Residency.
Healthcare.
Taxes.
Banks.
Rental contracts.
Qualifications.
Phone numbers.
Insurance.
Work rights.
Registration.
And the fascinating discovery that the document you need may require another document that requires the first document.
Some countries are more digital than others.
Some processes are easier.
Some are bewildering.
But wherever you go, building a life requires much more than finding a nice neighbourhood.
Eventually, bureaucracy becomes part of your cultural education too.
Then you start changing
This may be the part people warn you about least.
At first, culture shock is about noticing how different everyone else is.
Then, eventually, you notice that you are different too.
You take habits from one place into another.
Your expectations change.
Your idea of good service changes.
Your communication changes.
Things that once irritated you become normal.
Things you never noticed about your home culture suddenly become obvious.
And when you go back home, sometimes home feels slightly foreign as well.
That is an odd experience.
You can end up belonging to several places without feeling completely contained by any one of them.
I don't necessarily see that as a loss.
Over time, it becomes a kind of freedom.
Don't build your entire life inside an international bubble
This is one lesson I would give anyone moving abroad.
Finding people from your own country can be incredibly comforting.
You speak naturally.
You eat familiar food.
You don't have to explain everything.
There is nothing wrong with that.
But if your entire social world recreates home in another country, you can live somewhere for years without really understanding where you live.
Some of my most valuable experiences came from crossing those boundaries.
Working with people from different cultures.
Joining community programmes.
Volunteering.
Learning how local organisations operate.
Having conversations where I was the person who did not completely understand the context.
It can be uncomfortable.
That discomfort is also where much of the learning happens.
You do not need to become someone else to adapt
There is a bad version of cultural adaptation that sounds like:
If you want to live here, become like everyone here.
I don't agree with that.
Moving internationally does require flexibility.
You need to learn local expectations.
Respect the culture.
Understand how people communicate.
Recognise that your way of doing something is not automatically the best or only way.
But adaptation should not require deleting yourself.
You bring something too.
Your language.
Your experiences.
Your food.
Your humour.
Your way of seeing problems.
Your understanding of another market.
Your relationships with another part of the world.
The goal is not to become less Vietnamese, more Australian, or perfectly Spanish.
The goal is to become capable of moving between those worlds with respect.
The difficult parts are often the valuable parts
If I only showed somebody the photographs, international life would look easy.
Australia gave me beaches, friendships, education, career opportunities and experiences I could never have predicted when I arrived.
Spain is giving me another language, another culture, another professional chapter and another way of seeing Europe and the world.
Those things are real.
But so are the uncomfortable parts.
Starting again.
Being misunderstood.
Missing people.
Looking stupid occasionally.
Getting something wrong culturally.
Being unable to express yourself properly.
Finding your place.
Losing it.
Finding another one.
That is also the experience.
And perhaps we should talk about it more.
Not to discourage people from moving overseas.
I would probably encourage the opposite.
But there is a difference between travelling somewhere and building a life there.
The first gives you photographs.
The second changes you.
And most of that change happens well outside the frame.