How do you make friends in a foreign country?
I am doing my OE in Canada. It has been both good and bad. Good, because I have proved to myself that I can be independent and survive on my own. I organised it all myself, I paid for my travel all myself, and I saw many great things both while I was in America and since I have been in Canada. I found a place to live and a job (both crappy, but survivable), and have not got lost, panicked, or cried at all.
Only now I have been in Vancouver a month, and I have no friends, and thus nobody to do anything with. I don't mind doing things on my own, but many things are better with company. Also, I am incredibly lonely and homesick and I really, really hate my job.
Every single conversation I have had in the past month has been either a retail transaction, arranging rent payment, or a series of repeated statements puncuated with hand gestures attempting to have a conversation with someone who speaks English as a second language. Or the other conversation, which has two versions, and is with customers at work.
With someone from New Zealand or Australia:
Them: Are you from New Zealand?
Me: Yes, are you?
Them: Yes, what part?
Me: Near Hamilton, you?
Them: wherever they are from
Then we parts ways with variations on "Nice hearing a Kiwi accent."
With someone not from New Zealand or Australia:
Them: Where's your accent from/are you Australian/English/Irish/Welsh/Belgian?
Me: I'm from New Zealand
Them: Some variation of "Oh, New Zealand's lovely", often accompanied by a well meant but incorrect statement about New Zealand, said with the air of someone expected to be congratulated on their knowledge/my friend is Australian/I went there once/I have relatives there/What language do you speak?
I just want a conversation in person with someone where there is no language barrier and we talk about something else.
Rant over.
I miss my family.