Are you thinking of leaving your Greek home and returning to your home land? You may be excited about returning home and getting back to the familiar surroundings of your home land, but often returning home after spending time living abroad can be just as difficult as settling in to life abroad in the first place. It doesn't matter how excited or disappointed you are at the thought of returning home, you will experience
positive and negative aspects of the move and things many not be as they seem or how you would have imagined. You will be quite surprised to find home some things have completely changed since you were living there and yet on the other hand, other points will have stayed the same.
Some Things Never Change
Some things never change! Yes it is true, they don't. Although you have spent many months or even years living the good life in Greece, your friends and relatives back home will still be carrying on with their work and life as usual. It is difficult to imagine that whilst you were in Greece drinking ouzo with the locals and learning the lingo, your relatives and friends back home will still be in the same routine as what they were in when you left. Although you may be excited about going back home, try to think about the reasons why you left in the first place.
Back in to a Routine
When people move abroad, they often find it hard to settle back in to their old routine. This applies to work, meeting new people and how you spend your leisure time. It is difficult to go from the glorious weather in Greece to possibly a cooler climate back home. And although it can be nice to going back to being just another citizen in your town/city/village rather than ‘the foreigner' or known as whatever nationality you are, it is difficult going back to being just a number in a hierarchy. Even if you have spent time working in Greece, the majority of the time, the lifestyle is still more relaxed than the life you knew back home, hence the reason you moved in the first place. That doesn't mean to say that your life abroad was a bed of roses, but often it is all too easy to forget the life you had back home. The common thing that expats living abroad tend to do is to play each country (home and away) off against each other when problems occur in either country. Meaning that when times are bad in Greece you claim that it was better back home then however, when you move back home and problems occur, you say how life was far better in Greece. It is a natural thing that many expats tend to do and it is a very hard habit to break unless you can be completely happy with one country or another.
Moving With the Times
We have discussed how we struggle to cope with the fact that not much has changed with our friends and families and how they have no new stories to tell us. However, expats suffer a similar problem when returning home, as they expect some things to remain the same but they don't. Although when you come to tell your stories from your travels, you may be disappointed to hear that our friends have the same job, live in the same area and still watch the same TV programs, it is difficult to cope with the fact that you may struggle to find anything in common with your friends and former colleagues now. When you left to move to Greece, they would have moved on and found new friends and got close to other people too and although you may have been best friends before you left, you cannot expect things to go back to being how they were. You may have even noticed that your friends and family have changed, but they may also think the same about you. Many expats find that when they return home, it is like moving to a different country, as they end up making all new friends again anyway. Even if you have kept in touch with your friends for the whole duration of your time in Greece, you must bear in mind that the qualities you had in common before you left may not be visible anymore.
Stories from a Far
Initially your friends and families will be happy to hear your tales from Greece; some people are not so interested. This can be quite upsetting when you reminisce about experiences that you have had in Greece and find that people back home are not interested in hearing about them. This is a point that many people do not even think of. If you want to talk about times that you have had in Greece, it is better to keep in contact with the friends that you made there, as they will be more understanding about such matters. Whereas the people back home who know very little about living abroad, are most probably jealous of you for trying something that they have never had or will ever have the courage to do by themselves. But of course, not everyone is like this and some people will be truly fascinated about anything that you have to say. A good point to remember is not to go on to much unless you are asked.
