What to do your first month, abroad, your first month, being black and abroad should be completely devoted to getting the setup, because Congratulations!!!!
You did it, you left whatever country you were living in and moved to a new country.
So take a moment and just celebrate that.
Now, the first month abroad is a mix of excitement, being scared shitless and a little bit of confusion, and that is all okay.
(1) You have to be first of all comfortable with the different emotions, you are feeling so first month abroad, get comfortable with your emotions, you’re gonna be feeling a lot of them, and that is a, okay, if you get frustrated if you get angry if you’re super excited and pumped.
Just know that that is part of the process of adjusting to a new country, perhaps a new language new food new people, a new neighborhood.
(2) And that brings me to my next tip, which is housing yet gotta find housing. Now, if you have followed some of my advice in earlier blogs you have not committed to housing permanent housing until you are on the ground so you’re staying at an Airbnb, hotel for a week, two weeks until you actually get to see and tour places.
So, I suggest that the first two weeks you just check out different neighborhoods have coffee there, go walk around, go look at some different properties and decide which is your spot.
You may before you’ve left your home country think perhaps you want to be in the city center and then you get to the city center and you realize it’s just way too noisy or too many tours, or too many something else, homeless people or something else.
So give yourself time to have meal to check out to go to different neighborhoods at different times to see what the safety situation is like, maybe you saw an apartment you loved online, and then you get there and you realize when the lights go down. There’s nothing but prostitutes on your block, and maybe you’re okay with that. Maybe you’re not. But let’s secure housing in your first month.
(3) Get to know transportation, get to know the transportation and in your new home city, be it buses via bikes, be it Ubers or other ride sharing technologies.
Make sure you know how to get around your city so spend the first month just exploring, take a bus and see where the issue.
Take a tuk tuk or another local form of transportation and see where you can go ask around walk by foot, but just spend time exploring.
(4) Next up, comes mobile plan, ya gotta get a local SIM card, and a local phone so that should be something you do within your first two or three days, see how much phone plans cost, how much data you’re going to need, and get yourself a vocal number so that people can contact you and you can stay in contact with people.
Plus, as you go around and explore you look for housing you do all those things, you’ll want to wait for people to get in contact with you. And also, folks back home are also going to want to be able to reach you.