My Top 5 Challenges of Adjustment to Expat Life in India

Our new traffic jams.

If I were the me 7 months ago listening to the me now, I'd probably not be very sympathetic hearing me complain about this move. I was working long days, doing housework, trying to maintain a social life, and we were paying off debt while saving for the future, which left little for the present. Like many people we were over-scheduled, overworked, and overwhelmed on a daily basis.   

Coming to India was a decision that I haven't regretted once. Every day I wake up, I am thankful to be here. I can easily say that the pros of living here outweigh the negatives yet there were some things that initially were very challenging and it took a while to process through them. There were tears and fights and days when I shut the world out and slept the whole day away. Building new friendships, working out, talking with my partner, planning our first visit home, and making sure to get out of the house everyday (even if I'm just going to a coffee shop) helped a lot.  Doing this is hard, there's no doubt about it, but the payoff is amazing and I'm  pretty sure we can consider ourselves acclimated at this point. 

There are a bunch of great blogs out there if you're interested in learning about the logistical challenges that others have faced while moving to India, so I decided just to focus on sharing the internal (and thankfully temporary!) challenges that I had to overcome in the first few months here:

1. No job - I love working so when I got here and realized that, for numerous reasons, I would most likely not be able to get back into another corporate "9-to-5" here, it was a rough adjustment.   
2. Self-Identity and "SO, what do you DO all day?" - This is a loaded question, depending on who's asking and why. I get asked this a lot, and the short answer is that no two days are the same. I'm putting this as a challenge because in the first few months when I was asked this question, I felt defensive, put on the spot, and resentful. Dealing with the recent off-ramping of my career, the relocation, and the life I had just left behind challenged my self-identity, so being asked what I "do all day" just reminded me of how lost and disoriented I was feeling. 
3. Poverty -  Poverty is everywhere; sometimes I see it multiple times a day. I help when I can, in ways that are meaningful, and though it is hard to see, becoming numb to it is not something I strive for.  I hope that everyone can give what and when they are able. A little kindness goes a long way. 
4. Missing friends/Loneliness - After we moved, we lost touch with a lot of our friends.  I'm positive that when we visit or if we move back our friendships will pick right back up, but for the first few months it was rough because we didn't feel like we belonged anywhere. At the same time we were calling a new place home, surrounded by new people, we were becoming more irrelevant and further removed from our home country and friends. It was a profound experience. 
5. No driving  - this is tough. Having a driver is great (read about it here), but it's also got a few disadvantages.  No more long, aimless drives in the country, spontaneous trips to the beach, visits to the off-leash dog park (no dog parks at all for that matter), or late-night runs to Wawa. If one of us has an emergency in the middle of the night, we'll need to flag down a rickshaw to go to the hospital or call the ambulance and wait for 15 minutes. I haven't gotten to the point where I feel comfortable enough to drive, though some expats do with ease. I hope I can be one of them but for now I'm going to stay in the back seat!

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