I have been an international student in Paris and an expat working in Los Angeles. Both places taught me that feeling at home abroad is not something that just happens to you. You have to build it on purpose. Here are the four things that worked for me, written from the perspective of someone who has done this in two different cities and now lives in a third.
If you are about to start a gap year, an international master’s, or a job overseas, these are the practical moves I wish I had started in week one.
Set up your space to remind you who you are
Your space is your sanctuary. When you live abroad, it is easy to lose yourself in a new culture, language, people, and job. You want to come back to your apartment and find yourself again.
My room in Paris has cards from people, photo prints, fridge magnets from trips, beer caps that meant something, and a box of postcards I have collected over the years. Books on the shelf I never read because they remind me of where I bought them. Curated for me, not guests.
In Los Angeles I did the same thing. A framed Paris print I found for free, small souvenirs collected along the way. By the time I left LA, my space had become its own home. When you walk into a room that visibly reminds you of who you are, you stop feeling like a stranger to yourself. I touched on the same principle in what to bring to France.
Find local foods that become your comfort foods
Feeling at home means making the new place your home, not importing the old place into it. Food is the most direct lever.
It is tempting to fly with a suitcase of food from home. That supply runs out. If your comfort food is something you cannot buy at the local supermarket, you stay structurally dependent on home and never quite settle in.
In every city I have moved to, I spend my first few weeks trying random things at the supermarket. Snacks I have never heard of. Spice mixes I have to look up. The ones I love become my new staples. In Paris that means Twinings rooibos, Sriracha from the Asian aisle, Lotus Speculoos paste on bread, an oriental spice mix I keep refilling. In LA it was Acai bowls and a chicken-and-Japanese-rice recipe a flatmate taught me.
I keep a small stock of Indian snacks for special occasions. Nothing I depend on daily. That rule has served me well for six years.
Find a group of people with the same interests
Feeling at home is identity plus belonging. Identity comes from your space and habits. Belonging comes from people. The fastest way to find your people is through a shared interest.
In LA I went on Meetup at the start of every week and signed up for one or two events that looked interesting. I let myself cancel on the day if I needed to, but I went to most. At one I joined a French speakers’ meetup that turned into a weekly happy hour with two guys. At another I joined an improv class that led to a real circle.
In Paris I went to a Chinese New Year dinner hosted by the Asian Creative Network. That is where I met one of my closest friends here. In my first year at HEC I joined KIP, the media club, and through it met the founder, who became another close friend.
The pattern is simple. Find one weekly activity built around something you actually care about. Show up every week for a year. Repetition builds depth. Collecting one-off events does not work the same way. I covered the friendship logic in more depth in the funnel theory of networking. If you study abroad, you will meet people in class. If you work abroad, you have to push harder. The broader version of this is in moving abroad is hard.
Make a weekly schedule, and a longer-term one
As a student, your week is set by classes and assignments. Your weekends fill up because your classmates are also new and also eager. When you are working as an expat, especially in your first few months, you finish work and stare at an empty evening. That is when loneliness hits the hardest.
The cure is a plan. At the start of each week I block in things I am going to do every evening. Some are events I find online. Some are concerts. Some are friend hangs. Some are solo things I have decided to do because they make me happy.
In LA, my weekly template included a cycling-on-the-beach evening, a coffee-shop-with-a-book evening, my improv class, a Meetup, and a solo restaurant visit. As friendships built, I started replacing solo blocks with friend blocks. By the end of my time in LA, my week was full and felt like mine.
I do the same thing in Paris now, six years in. The schedule changes shape every season, but the practice is the same. The week never gets to ambush me with an empty Tuesday at 8 pm.
What this all adds up to
Feeling at home abroad is not about the city being friendly to you. It is about how deliberately you build identity and belonging in a place that does not yet recognise you. Space, food, people, and time. Those four levers are what worked for me in two different countries, and they are what I tell every friend who calls me from their first week in a new city.
It also gets easier. The first six months are the hardest because nothing is yet a habit. By year two, your space is yours, you have foods you love, you have a few real people you can call on a Saturday morning, and your week has a shape. I unpacked the longer arc of this in how I think about moving abroad.