Timed Essay

People who travel to another country to live, work or study for a period of time often suffer badly from homesickness.

Why is this?

What are the best ways to reduce this problem?

(>250 words, 40 minutes)
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While it is often a wonderful experience to experience life in another country due to work or study, homesickness is also a common problem one has to deal with.

People become homesick because they miss their home - the familiarity with the old living environment, the food and the people who have been present in our lives are suddenly unavailable to us when we travel to a distant land. Once arriving at a foreign land, the traveller needs to familiarise himself with the environment. There are new people to meet, new names to remember, new streets to travel on, and different social customs to observe. All these draw a great deal of energy from the traveller. The traveller may find the new experience exciting at first, but the new experience may soon become an emotional burden when the traveller cannot grasp the "rules" of the country. He may start to compare this new environment with that in his own country and find fault in the customs or values of the new country, which he could not change. The tension between the individual and his living environment translates into helplessness, and the traveller may miss the comfort of the familiarity he enjoys in his home country. The situation is aggravated when the traveller is struggling with a new language, as the language obstacle may prevent him from establishing new relationships and communicating his distress.

Although homesickness may be a scary experience, the good news is that it is often temporary, and will subsede (correction: subside)) as the traveller familiarise himself with the environment. To ease homesickness during this transition period, the traveller should try to make friends as soon as arriving at a new country. The traveller should also get himself acquainted with the expatriate or international student community, because coming from a similar background and having been through a similar problem, they could be a source of emotional support. Apart from that, the traveller should always be open-minded and refrain from comparing the society in the foreign country with his homecountry, and acknowledge that the cultural differences he observe will add to his learning experience. To further ease his homesickness, the traveller is advised to establish a routine in the foreign country in order to regain a sense of familiarity he enjoys in his home country. This could be frequenting the same restaurant for lunch, playing sports regularly with new friends and focusing on his work.

In most cases, homesickness are manageable and will eventually transform into a positive experience and contribute to the personal growth of the traveller. Therefore, one should never let the prospect of homesickness scare them away from studying or working in another country.
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(448 words, 50 minutes)