Homesick

Homesick was one of the things I could not understand, simply because I never felt homesick. Maybe because I was never away from home for a long time.

However, moving to another country proves to be a whole new experience for me to learn to be homesick.

I moved from Indonesia to Dubai in August 2011. The first weeks were awesome. The husband took me to places for sightseeing; I learned to manage our little studio apartment. Basically, meeting the husband after month apart felt good.

After that, I started to look for jobs.

And my first interview.

We took a couple of buses and had to walk a couple of miles to the interview place. The sun was strikingly hot. We got lost and had to take a taxi there.

The interviewee was a big Western guy (after I googled I found out he was Australian), and he was intimidating.

And I was intimidated.

We got home, and I started to worry.

Can I survive in this place? This place is so foreign. Come to think of it, the people are not friendly. Moreover, Asian people are looked down on here.

And I started to miss my hometown, where everything is comfortable, where I know every nook and corner. I miss my comfort zone.

I got homesick.

Image is from here, but the blog says it is credited to Google. Oh, well.


It started to be difficult to eat, to sleep, and even to smile. And it started be easy to get irritated, to cry, and to be angry.

I thought the feeling gonna last forever. But everyone told me it's gonna past soon. It's called adaptation. And thank God they were right. After few weeks of torturing homesickness, I actually got over it. I started to adapt.

Some tips I get from friends to cure homesickness (and they work! Thank you guys!):
  • from @me_xtine at twitter: get busy!
  • from @omania at twitter: skype and talk with family at home!
Now I am still jobless. But I start to feel comfortable in this foreign land, which is starting to plunge into its windy and much cooler winter.

At the end of Dubai's 2011 summer, I learned how it felt to be homesick :)

The facade of my apartment building, by the way.

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