Not seeing the people you're used to seeing every week is one of the things that's most painful about moving to a distant place, even if it's relatively close (aka the same continent). You can't just jump on a plane to go out for lunch or a cocktail with your best friends, well some people probably can but I can't because believe me I would if I had that much money.
Having some of my closest friends come to visit me is something I'd been looking forward to for ages, I was really eager to show them every part of my new life and my city. Obviously I was amazingly happy when two of my lovely girls booked a flight to come over during their uni holidays in february (which by the way, we don't get here in the UK, why?!)
As the day came closer and closer I got more and more excited but also more and more nervous. What if they didn't like it here? What if they found it too wet and too cold? What if we'll start to argue because we're not used to being together 24/7? I never even realised there was so much I could be worried about, but I did my best to just forget about those things and prepare as much as I could, I cleaned my room, got an airbed, got some fresh flowers, sprayed the room so it smelled nice, you know, all those things.
I don't want to go into too much detail about the whole week they were here because that would just be a very long post, but I'll just mention some things that might be important to someone who is in the same situation. Or someone who is visiting a friend abroad even.
Firstly, there is no need to try and plan everything, when you're with your friends at home and you meet up in town, most of the time you don't even decide where to go for coffee before you actually meet each other, so why plan everything when they're there to visit you? Yes you should make a list of things you want to show them and ask them to make a list of things they want to see, after all it's not all your job, you're not a tourist guide, you're their friend, they'll realise that eventually. (maybe).
Now, I love my friends because, well, they're obviously my friends so I must feel some sort of positive feeling towards them right? But everyone is different, and some people are more alike than others, some people are extremely easy to deal with and some aren't especially in out of the ordinary situations. When one of your friends is being really annoying while visiting you, maybe because they don't like that you're happy in your new country, maybe because they're jealous, whatever. Just try and ignore it, I'm bad at this but I keep telling myself all over again: I have achieved something by moving here and living my dream (basically) so those of my friends who are happy for me are the ones I listen to and then ones I trasure because it is hard to be so far away from each other and still be friends, but some people do it really well whereas others just suck at it. But that's just life and I try and ignore it as much as I can.
So this was a bit of a random post I guess, I just felt like I wanted to share some of my thoughts, I also want to encourage more of my friends to come here because it's great here (really!) and I'm really thankful for their support.
Magdalena.
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