Christmas away from home

[dragsil]

I´m bored and lonely so I thought I´ld have a bit of a ramble.

I´ve been living in Sweden for the past few months and miss my family like crazy, to me it doesnt feel like Christmas without 40 degree heat and dust storms. I´m pretty excited to experience my first white Christmas but spending it away from family sucks.

I think i´ll start feeling better when I learn the language more, I´m doing 15 hours a week of Swedish classes and 10 hours a week apprenticeship at a riding stables, so I´m pretty busy. It´s so hard to make friends though, people here are so different to back home. In Australia people seem to be friendly, outgoing and loud in public where I find the swedes are more reserved and anything slightly odd is looked at with shock. It feels a bit stepford wives to see no public displays of emotion, Melbourne is such a colourful city with characters everywhere so moving to a tiny country town feels insane.

Sounds like I´m having a whinge but I really do love it here, just wish I could start making some friends!

 

[VolunteerChin22]

I find food helps make friends make some cookies for people or offer to host dinner

 

[dragsil]

I´m planning on taking the easy way out by buying some cakes to take into immigrant class tomorrow, I attempted a few conversations today but people generally cant understand the mix of thick aussie accent with badly pronounced Swedish. English is commonly spoken here but I´m living in a tiny itty bitty country town where everyone knows everyone from six generations back, so assimilating is pretty hard!

Thank god for horses, working at a local stables requires minimal language skills since cleaning up poo is a pretty universal task

 

[hedgiespirit]

I am spending the holidays away from family as well. Granted, they are only 240 miles away... but because of work I won't be able to make it home. I think it is so cool that you moved from Australia to Sweden. My boyfriend and I have thought of moving to Sweden or thereabouts because of the high quality of life, but leaving family and friends behind sure would be tough. Was there a specific reason why you moved?

 

[6Dusters]

Yes I would think the odd change of season is very difficult to start with. Years ago I remember being single again and living in Florida. My family lived in another state and decided to stay in Florida since I had a job and was doing alright.

Being busy limits your opportunities to make friends. What about asking some people you know to go out for dinner or a drink. ( I don't know how old you are) Find out what the locals like to do for fun.

I found this web page for you. Hope it helps.
http://www.australiansabroad.com/sweden/expatsites.html:thumbsup:

 

[dragsil]

Was there a specific reason why you moved?

Yup, my bf studied in Australia where we met four years ago but overstayed his student visa and got deported :wacko: A year later, here I am in Sweden with my residency visa. I love how different it is to Melbourne and the opportunities I will have, once I have studied Swedish for a year I´m planning on going to uni to study vet nursing and animal studies and it will actually be a whole lot cheaper than if I studied back home. If you do decide to move here oneday I advise Göteborg, it´s much nicer than Stockholm imo and we hope to move closer to it soon. No jokes, almost every person we see on the street here is connected to my bf´s family somehow, it´s slightly creepy sometimes when I go out to run errands and get a text message from Matt saying that he knows what I´ve been up to via the grapevine.

Being busy limits your opportunities to make friends. What about asking some people you know to go out for dinner or a drink. ( I don't know how old you are) Find out what the locals like to do for fun.

I found this web page for you. Hope it helps.
http://www.australiansabroad.com/sweden/expatsites.html:thumbsup:

I´m 23, so nights out are on the cards Have started tennis lessons too to try to meet people which will hopefully work! *fingers crossed*
Thanks for the website! I actually stumbled across that one a while ago but lost the link so it´s bookmarked for sure now :thumbsup: