Finding My Rhythm: The Real Talk About Balancing Work and Studies as an International Student

Leaving home for the very first time at 18 years old, completely unsure of what lay ahead.

I still remember my very first flight. It wasn't just one flight, but two, with a long, painful wait stretched out in between.

I flew from Kathmandu to Delhi on Sahara Air. The plane was enormous, I had never been inside anything of that size before. In fact, I had never seen an airplane from the inside at all. I didn't know they served food during flights; I didn't know anything. I was 18 years old, and I had never left Nepal.

When I reached Delhi, I faced an eight-hour transit. That meant eight hours of sitting in a foreign airport alone, tired, confused, and already deeply missing home. That is the raw truth nobody tells you: homesickness did not hit me when I arrived in Singapore. It hit me right there in Delhi. I hadn't even reached my final destination yet, and I was already aching to turn back.

I watched other travelers move through that busy airport, families, tour groups, and business people who walked with absolute certainty, knowing exactly where they were going. Meanwhile, I sat on a hard plastic chair, staring at the ceiling, wondering what on earth I had done.

At that time, there was no phone at home. My father bought a wireless telephone for our village while I was already living in Singapore, not before I left, but during. So in Delhi, sitting completely alone for those eight hours, there was no one to call. There was no way to hear my mother's voice, and no way to say aloud: I am scared. I want to come home. I just sat there with strangers around me and silence inside me.

Then came the flight from Delhi to Singapore on Air India. Another massive plane, and more confusion. I remember looking out the window as we took off, watching the landscape disappear into the clouds, and something heavy settled in my chest. This is real now. There is no going back.

When I landed in Singapore, the heat was different. The smells were completely foreign. Everyone moved fast, spoke fast, and I walked through the terminal feeling completely, quietly invisible. That first night, I sat on a thin mattress in a rented room. No furniture, no family, and no familiar sounds. Just a particular type of silence, the kind that does not feel like quiet, but feels like an physical weight. Nobody had prepared me for that weight. No brochure, no teacher, nobody.

Today, students can watch YouTube tours of their future campus before they ever step foot on a plane. They can join community Facebook groups, see what the food looks like, and know exactly what to pack. They have a mountain of information. I had nothing but hope, fear, and eight hours in a Delhi airport where homesickness caught up to me before I even left my continent.

The Journey Was Not Linear

After two years in Singapore, I actually went back to Nepal. I continued my studies in Kathmandu and thought to myself: That international chapter is done. I will stay here now. But six months later, a completely new opportunity arrived in South Korea through a full-time work visa for five years. I was young and immature, so I didn't think deeply about the emotional cost; I just packed my bags and went.

South Korea proved to be much harder. The language was tougher, and the work was physically grueling. The loneliness felt exactly the same as Singapore, but heavier, because this time I was working long shifts in a factory town rather than studying on a campus with student life. After one year there, I made a sudden decision that confused everyone around me: I returned to Nepal again.

Navigating the early, challenging years of building a life in South Korea, where the days were long and the work was physically grueling.

From there, I prepared to go to London to study. Another new chapter, another rented room in a new city, and another first week of not knowing where anything was. But London was where I finally learned something vital about myself.

I remember the first time I took the London Tube alone. I accidentally boarded a train going in the wrong direction and didn't realize it for four stops. I stood there on the platform at an unfamiliar station, map in hand, as crowds of people rushed past me. I felt that old, familiar feeling wash over me: small, invisible, and utterly lost.

But this time, I didn't panic. I looked calmly at the map, figured out the lines, and found my way back.

That was the turning point. It wasn't the getting lost part that had changed, that was the same as always. What changed was that I no longer fell apart. I had been lost before in much bigger ways, and I had always found my way eventually. My body knew that now, even when my mind temporarily forgot. That is what a non-linear journey gives you: not a straight path to total confidence, but a quiet, deep knowing that you have already survived much harder things than today.

The First Few Weeks Feel Unreal

The first few weeks living abroad are incredibly strange. They aren't necessarily bad, just entirely unreal, as if you are watching your own life unfold from a distance.

I remember standing in a supermarket in Singapore, staring at the shelves for a long time. I couldn't find the regular rice I was used to eating, not the right type, not the brand, nor anything my hands recognized. I stood in that aisle for nearly ten minutes, just staring blankly.

I got lost on the MRT subway system multiple times. To cope, I pretended I knew exactly where I was going, walking with intense purpose past strangers while having absolutely no idea where I would end up. In my university classes, I understood the literal English words but completely missed the underlying meaning. Local students laughed out loud at jokes built from cultural references I didn't possess. I smiled along anyway. I nodded anyway. I became exceptionally good at performing understanding while understanding absolutely nothing.

Every night, I lay in my room and imagined writing a detailed letter home. I wasn't actually writing them down, just composing the sentences silently in my head: Today I ate something I didn't recognize. Today I got lost but found my way back. Today I was lonely, but I am okay. I am okay. Because there was no phone yet, those letters stayed trapped in my mind. But somehow, just creating them helped me survive.

Homesickness Hits Harder Than You Expect

You think you understand what homesickness feels like before you actually experience it. You imagine it as a mild, passing sadness like missing an old friend. It is nothing like that. It is the sudden ache of missing everything all at once.

I deeply missed the sound of my mother cooking before dawn. The specific smell of dal boiling, which I had never once thought about when I lived at home because it was always just part of the air, became a luxury. I missed the distinct weight of my father's footsteps in the morning, the way the village smelled after a fresh rain on dry earth, and the faint noise of the neighbors' radio bleeding through our thin walls.

I missed Dashain and Tihar, the two biggest festivals of the Nepali year, in a way I never could have fully appreciated when I was physically there. I craved the way the whole family gathers, the specific traditional foods, and the effortless feeling of being surrounded by people who have known you your entire life. I missed being understood without having to explain myself.

The worst hours were always at night. When the city outside finally went quiet and my room held no sound, the weight of being completely unreachable set in. I would lie there and cry quietly into my pillow where no one could hear.

During those nights, I thought: Something is wrong with me. I am weak. A stronger person would handle this fine. I was wrong. I wasn't weak. Now I know that almost every single international student cries alone in their room at some point. We just never admit it out loud. We put on a brave face for class, for the group chats, and for the photos we send back home. Then we return to our rooms and let ourselves feel the full weight. That is not weakness; it is simply what it costs to grow up.

The familiar smells of home became a luxury during those quiet, lonely evenings abroad.

The Comparison That Lives Inside You

When I first moved to Singapore, there was no Instagram, no video reels, and no algorithm showing me other people's curated lives. But I still found a way to compare myself to others.

I compared myself to the students who appeared completely settled. The ones who had already made groups of friends, who laughed easily in the corridors, and who didn't hesitate for a second when ordering food in the busy canteen. I watched them and thought: Why is it so effortless for them and so grueling for me? What do they have that I lack?

What I didn't see was their difficult first month. I didn't see their confusion or their private loneliness. I only saw where they were after months of adjusting, and I foolishly compared it to my own week one. That is always the wrong comparison to make.

Years later, after social media grew into what it is today, I watched this exact same trap play out for younger students. They consume highly polished study abroad content online, beautiful cafes, effortless weekend trips, and instant friendships. They arrive in a new country carrying massive expectations that have absolutely nothing to do with day to day reality.

The comparison habit doesn't need a smartphone to live inside you; it just needs a little bit of insecurity. And insecurity is the most natural thing in the world when you are new, foreign, and entirely alone. What I learned slowly over years and multiple countries is this: the person you are comparing yourself to is never showing you their hardest days. You are only ever seeing a small, curated part of someone else's story. Your full, authentic story, hard parts included, is worth far more than someone else's highlight reel.

The Pressure That Sits on Your Chest

My parents are farmers. They worked tirelessly every single day of my childhood. When I left for Singapore, my father made financial sacrifices that I couldn't fully comprehend at twenty years old. He found money from places I still don't know about, arranging things to make my life possible.

That kind of sacrifice stays with you.

Every single time I spent money on something unnecessary, I felt a wave of guilt. Every time I struggled to understand a lesson in class, I felt deep shame. Every time I had a miserable week, the same thought echoed: He gave up something real for me to be here. I cannot afford to waste it.

I remember failing a test in Singapore. It wasn't a catastrophic failure, just a small mark below passing, but I sat in the university library for hours afterward just staring blankly at the paper. I felt as though I had let down everyone who loved me, my father, my mother, and everyone in our village who was following my story from a distance. With no phone to call them, I had to sit with that heavy feeling completely alone.

But here is what I learned from sitting with hard feelings by myself: you survive them. You do not dissolve. If you sit with the shame, the fear, or the guilt long enough, eventually your breathing returns to normal, your head clears, and you think: Okay. What do I do next? That is not a comfortable lesson to learn, but it is an incredibly real one.

Loneliness Abroad Is Different

There is a distinct difference between the loneliness of being physically alone in a room, and the loneliness of being completely surrounded by people but feeling entirely invisible among them. When you live abroad, you spend most of your time in the second kind.

You speak the local language, but not fluently enough to truly express your real personality. Your natural humor doesn't translate. Your stories about home mean nothing to people who have never heard of your village, your traditional festivals, or your references. You share a piece of your heart that matters deeply to you, only to watch it land flat in a polite silence.

The friendships feel purely surface level at first. You are friendly with people, but you aren't close to them, and there is a massive gulf between the two.

Weekends were always the absolute hardest part of my week. Local students packed their bags and headed home to their families on Friday evenings, leaving the dormitory flats completely dead and quiet. I would be left standing there with a long Saturday and Sunday stretching ahead, no plans, no invitations, and still no phone call home to break the isolation.

I spent many of those long weekends learning how to be my own company. I explored large cities alone, sat in public parks watching families, read books, and walked down streets whose names I couldn't pronounce. I didn't love it at first, but I stopped hating it eventually. That emotional shift, moving from actively hating the solitude to simply existing peacefully within it, was one of the quietest, most powerful forms of growing up I ever experienced.

Learning to find comfort and strength within the deep solitude of long weekends in foreign cities.

Then, Slowly, Something Shifts

It never happens in one grand moment. There is no single morning where you wake up and suddenly feel completely different. It is a gradual, almost invisible process while it is happening.

One day, you find yourself ordering street food without nervously pointing at the picture. One day, you naturally catch the punchline of a local joke. You figure out the complex bus routes without needing to ask for help. One day, you suddenly notice you haven't thought about home all morning, and instead of feeling a wave of guilt about that, you simply accept it as a sign of healing.

You find a simple meal you can cook in your small kitchen that tastes remarkably like something your mother used to make. You find a fellow international friend who also misses their family just as much. The two of you sit together in a quiet room and eat comfort food without speaking much, and the silence feels entirely comfortable. That is a massive step forward.

And then, one day, your father finally buys that wireless telephone for the village.

I will never forget that first phone call. His voice came through a crackling, noisy line all the way from Nepal to Singapore. We didn't say anything profound. There was no big conversation. It was just: Are you okay? "Yes, I am okay. Are you okay?" "Yes, yes, we are all okay."

I cried tears of pure relief after I hung up. It was the specific, beautiful relief of knowing that the people you love are still there, still real, and finally reachable. Something deep inside my soul settled after that call.

One Day You Realize You Are Not the Same Person

This realization happens quietly, with no grand announcement.

You find yourself walking through an international airport, and at this point in my life, I cannot even count how many airports I have navigated: Kathmandu, Delhi, Singapore, Seoul, London, Lisbon, Brussels, and you suddenly realize you aren't scared anymore. You easily navigate customs, find your gate effortlessly, and notice a young student looking lost, terrified, and overwhelmed by their massive bags. You look at them and think: I know exactly how you feel right now.

And then the truth hits you: I am not that person anymore.

You speak another language, perhaps even several. Not flawlessly, but well enough to live, work, and survive inside them. You have faced loneliness that felt entirely permanent and proved it to be temporary. You have failed tests, jobs, and plans, and you got back up every single time. You have been completely lost in major cities across multiple continents and always found your way through.

You have left home so many times now. From Nepal to Singapore. Back to Nepal. To South Korea. Back to Nepal again. To London. Then onward to Portugal, Denmark, and Belgium. With each departure, you carried more weight with you, not in your physical luggage, but in your history, your scar tissue, and your wisdom. You developed the unique confidence that only comes from having no choice but to figure out life entirely alone.

I am roughly forty years old now. I live a peaceful life in Belgium with my wife and my two beautiful sons. My five-year-old proudly teaches me Dutch words at the dinner table, correcting my pronunciation with total authority. My parents are still back in Nepal, and I call them regularly on a digital phone that fits neatly into my pocket, a device that would have seemed like an absolute miracle to the twenty-year-old version of me sitting on that hard plastic chair in the Delhi airport with nowhere to turn.

That young man had absolutely no idea what lay ahead of him. He didn't know about the countries, the languages, the beautiful moments, or the crushing loneliness that would shape him.

I am so incredibly glad he kept going.

Conclusion

Studying abroad completely changes who you are. Not the way the marketing brochures show you, and certainly not the way the polished photos look on social media. It changes you in quiet ways that take real years to fully comprehend.

You learn that home is not a geographical place. It is people, smells, deep memories, the heavy sound of your father's footsteps, and the morning smell of your mother's kitchen. You carry that home inside you wherever you travel. It never leaves you.

You learn that you are capable of surviving so much more than you ever believed possible. You learn that loneliness will not kill you, that a single failure does not end your book, and that being temporarily lost in a new city or a difficult year is not the same as being finished.

The pain and the personal growth are not separate chapters; they happen together, inside the exact same months, and sometimes inside the very same day.

One day, years down the road, you will look back at that scared young person boarding their first plane, the one who didn't even know they served meals on flights, who sat alone in Delhi for eight hours with no way to call home, and you will feel a profound sense of pride.

Not because the journey was easy. But because you kept going anyway.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is homesickness normal when studying abroad?

Yes, it is completely normal. Experiencing homesickness is not a sign of personal weakness, nor does it mean you made the wrong decision to travel. It simply means you love your home and your family enough that being away from them naturally hurts. While the sharpest emotional pain usually softens after the first two or three months, homesickness will still come in waves for years. Even today, when I hear a traditional Nepali song, a part of me pulls back toward home. You never stop missing it; you simply learn how to carry it with you.

How long does culture shock actually last?

The initial wave of culture shock typically peaks between weeks two and six, right as the early excitement fades away and daily realities set in. For most international students, the sharpest discomfort begins to ease between months two and four. However, true cultural adjustment takes time; you aren't completely settled in a single year. Instead, you simply become far more practiced at navigating the unfamiliar. Over time, adapting becomes a natural part of who you are.

What actually helps with loneliness abroad?

The key is focusing on small, daily routines rather than massive lifestyle changes. Find one local routine that belongs completely to you, a specific coffee shop, a favorite walking path, or a weekend market. Join a student club or community group, not with the immediate pressure to make best friends, but to build consistent familiarity with new faces.

Cook comfort foods that remind you of home, and set a healthy schedule to call your family so you aren't constantly dividing your heart between two places at once. Most importantly, allow yourself to feel lonely without assuming it means your journey is a failure. It is simply part of the price of growth.

Does studying abroad actually make you a stronger person?

Yes, it absolutely does, but not in the way motivational posters claim. It makes you stronger because it forces you to confront challenges you cannot run away from, language barriers, isolation, bureaucratic confusion, and failure. Each time you navigate a hard day independently, your mind records a victory. This resilience accumulates quietly over time. Years later, when you face difficult situations in life, you will find you aren't as frightened because you know you've survived being lost before.

Recommended Reading for You: 📖 The Loneliness Nobody Talks About as an International Student

With love,
Bitty 🙏❤️

Brugge, Belgium 🇧🇪

From a village in Nepal with no telephone. To Kathmandu. To Delhi. To Singapore. To Seoul. To London. To Lisbon. To Denmark. To here. The journey was not linear. But it was mine.