Back Home and Homesick

It is perhaps expected when you go abroad for a long stretch of time that you may from time to time experience homesickness -- a yearning for something familiar and comfortable, for people you know and love. Less expected, but also quite common, is the homesickness that many exchange students feel once they return home. In the course of a few months or a year, the host country, family and friends, had become so familiar and comfortable that this is the longing.

"It is my goal to go back to Ecuador as soon as possible. If I can manage to get the money together, I’ll be back there this summer."

The urgency of the homesickness for the host country can disrupt the person's ability to become re-involved with his life back home. Such feelings are much more intense than, for example, the fond memories I carry of that lovely little house we rented in Montréal once. Sometimes I imagine living again in that house, chatting with the neighbor behind us, shopping for groceries around the corner, commuting on the Metro to some job, watching the children at the playground across the street. It wouldn't be a bad life, but I'm not so dissatisfied with the life I have now to contemplate making any plans to rush back. I also have fond memories of the mountains rising around Quito in a view that can take your breath away. I hope to return to both these places sometime, but my life right now is here in New York.

Now what?

"I’m going through a period of great disillusionment with my life and my plans. Maybe because last year, I understood what it meant to invest a year of your life in something wonderful, and am now struggling to find just as valid a plan into which to plunge myself."

Of course, it's not just the fantasy of what life might be like back in the host country that can create a disruption for the returning student. It's often equally a question of how to incorporate the benefits of the intercultural experience into the life you have at home. The exchange students coming home have a new perspective on themselves, a new outlook on the world. The more profound the experience, the more time and reflection is needed to rearrange the way one gives meaning to life to include these new perspectives and multiple layers of meaning. Going through the re-entry process thoughtfully leads to a richer life.

What can parents do to help?

Most of the AFS students are in their last two years of secondary school and still depend to a great extent on the support and concern of their parents. Recently we published an article on the AFS web site that humorously and indulgently talks about the re-entry experience, addressed (in this case) to Brazilian parents and their returning teenagers. Funny, emotional, and very much to the point, THE LONG AWAITED RETURN HOME, by AFS Educational Advisory Council member Andréa Sebben and Raquel Fernandes, is written with a very Latin flavor for parents who miss their son or their daughter but may be quite surprised to meet the young man or woman who comes home. (Also available in Spanish as EL ANSIADO REGRESO A CASA).

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International