Your First Week Abroad

You've arrived. The flights are behind you, the boxes are somewhere, and you're standing in the middle of your new life abroad — and it feels nothing like you pictured. If your first week is more disorienting than magical, that's not a bad sign. It's the most normal thing in the world. Here's what to actually expect in those first days, from a therapist who's been through it.

The first week lies

Whatever you feel in the first few days, hold it loosely — because the first week is pure adrenaline, and adrenaline isn't the truth yet. Everything is heightened. One hour the new place feels thrilling and full of possibility; the next, a trip to buy dish soap reduces you to near-tears because you can't find it and can't ask. Neither extreme is the real story. Give yourself a rule: no big conclusions about whether this was a mistake until the dust settles.

What you'll actually feel

Expect a strange cocktail: excitement and dread, capable and helpless, all in the same afternoon. Small tasks that were automatic back home — the bus, the bank, small talk — suddenly take all your concentration, and that cognitive load is exhausting in a way that surprises people. You may sleep badly, feel foggy, or find yourself unexpectedly emotional. That's not fragility. That's a nervous system doing a huge amount of work at once.

The grief that ambushes you

Somewhere in the first week, often at the oddest moment, the goodbye catches up with you. You'll be fine, and then a familiar song or an empty evening will land you in a wave of missing people, places, your old ordinary life. This is grief, and it belongs here. You can be genuinely glad you came and still mourn what you left. Letting the wave move through you — rather than scolding yourself for it — is how it passes.

The first week isn't for conquering your new city. It's for landing. Those are very different jobs, and only one of them is fair to ask of yourself right now.

A gentle first-week to-do list

Forget the landmarks. Here's the list that actually helps you settle:

• Pick one anchor. The same coffee spot, the same morning walk. Belonging is built through small repetition, and one familiar thing gives your whole week a spine.
• Find your basics. A grocery store, a pharmacy, a park. Just knowing where things are lowers the background stress of every single day.
• Set a rhythm for calls home. On a schedule, not only on the nights you're crumbling — a standing time to look forward to keeps the loneliness from spiraling.
• Do one thing badly. Order in the language, take the wrong bus, mispronounce something. Getting it wrong on purpose, early, takes the pressure off getting it perfect.
• Lower the bar. "Good enough to get through this week" is a completely valid goal. You are not behind. You just arrived.

You don't have to love it yet

If part of you is quietly panicking that you don't feel the joy you expected — please hear this: you're allowed to not love it yet. "Yet" is doing a lot of quiet work. Belonging is slow, and the honeymoon-then-dip arc is so predictable it's practically a schedule (more on that in why month three abroad is the hardest). Right now, your only job is to land. The loving-it can come later, and for most people, it does.

Be gentle with yourself this week. You've just done something genuinely brave, and you're allowed to find it hard. One anchor, your basics, a call home, and permission to get things wrong — that's a full and worthy first week. The rest, you'll learn on the ground.

More free tools for the inner side of moving abroad are in the journal library →