I feel like I am not me anymore since I moved away from home.

Hello Dear,

I can understand your situation as i am also on the same road. Where are you ? Riyadh ?

Hi! I am here in Norway. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Not being able to express who you actually are. Hehe

Ohh Norway !! I am worse in Saudi Arabia 😥😥

How long have you been living there??

i just moved here 3 months back...and u can imagine how it is ...all i do is go window shopping ....i dont know the language and i dont have girl friends too....

Oh no! The beginning is always hard. Exploring the city is a good idea.. maybe? I don’t know. Hehe. i have never been to Riyadh so I do not know the rules there. What I did when I first came here, i studied their language. So I can understand them.

wow ...u r smart then 

Not really. I wanted to have friends so I feel like there is a need to learn the language. but still, it’s difficult to connect with people. Especially if they are so shy too.

I lived abroad several times in my life (most times for studies) and I totally understand what you're talking about. Making friends was one of the hardest things.. I think people are not meant to be alone, or live isolated, on the contrary, we all need friends, community, people with whom we can   have a coffee, an amazing ice cream or the worst dinner in town. I discovered that foreigners like getting together every now and then as they face very similar issues (for me, this was the case each time abroad, in several countries), and it's very easy to organize a little event. You could create an event (a movie night, a gathering at a pizza place, etc) and post it on this website and see what happens. Or, regardless if you're religious or not, you could visit a church or two (usually a good place to meet locals and foreigners). Or, a language class, or opportunities for volunteering in your area are also some options.

As men. Believe me we have the same problem.. But we hide it cause we try to adjust or over come minorities

Anybody in riyadh, waNted to grab a pizza ??
Only Ladies please.

in this much time while posting..am sure you could have learned dosens of new words here.

There is a facebook page for filipinos in Norway www.facebook.com/filcom.no/

Internations also have a strong following for filipinos  www.internations.org/norway-expats/filipinos

Have you tried contacting the Philippines Embassy for information about clubs or communities?

Thanks!! Yes, I know this facebook page. But most of them live far from where I stay. And here in a smal town I live, there are only few filipinos who are also busy with their own families.

How do you do that? Haha. I love conversations but I really think it’s hard to connect with people personally.I guess I’m too shy to talk to people.But I can talk to anyone online.

i am not advertising but u should join group its called internation. it might help you to meet new people in norway. they arrange meetings every weekend etc.

Yes I have joined that site. But the meeting places are far from where I live. plus I never really had the courage to meet people personally. I know I have to overcome this kind of personality I have. I want to have friends but I really can’t dare to be the one to talk first. Sounds crazy, isn’t it? 😂

I tried to learn the violin since I am a fan of classical musice... so eventually I became a member of the orchestra club here.. i thought that’s one way of getting friends. yes I met people.. but not really talked to them. They are shy too. And maybe because of the language barrier. I cannot fully express what I mean.

I think you know exactly what you need to do, also maybe the culture difference is another factor, I would say you can overcome your difficulties, but you always need to be careful, also try to find residents from your home County, that might take you few steps away from where you standing, I'm sure you can get over such situation.

From the comments I read above I don't think it will be hard for you to make friends, you seem genuine and quite honest in your feelings, all you have to do is try to use that same attitude to your real life. Its gonna be awkward at first but to make an omelette we need to break some eggs. So next time you go out to a cafe, scout anyone or group of people and go introduce yourself, the worst that could happen is they ignore you, do it again and again. I promise you gonna find friends. Take this as a personal growth experiment, because at the end of the day your confidence will be off the roof and that's a very great strength in today world.   GOOD LUCK!!!!

i have imagined myself doing that.. Haha, but I really can't. I feel like I'm gonna stutter.  Maybe the biggest factor here is the language. I can write and understand well but speaking makes me do second thoughts on pronunciation so I just become too tired to speak. I do know some people here of same country of origin. They are nice people but they are so much older than me like most of them are older than my mom. And they have their own families.

You are in Western world . It's all standard here . If you'd like to find more open
Norwegians you need to move  maybe to ... Thailand . Lol .
Take it easy .

I think the sentence you should learn so well is " my name is... I am an expatriate, sorry I can't speak Norwegian fluently so bear with me, how are you"  their body language will tell you if they are interested in knowing you or not , however they won't be rude.L locals really find it adorable when foreigners try to speak their language ..I am in Thailand so I know what you mean about the language barrier, it's not your first language you don't have to speak it fluently everyone will understand.

Hey...atleast u shld be thankful u r in a more cosmopolitan place...imagine people like me...where there is nothing to do...no movie no driving no going out..no coffee shops...its all so different...making friends and meeting friends is considered illegal ...so its just tht u appreciate what u have..make friends ...meet them...i wish we had atleast 1 club here like tht lol..

yea I feel your plight sister... jeeeez is like living in a monk shrine where you just have to meditate all the time. You like window shopping yea? so make friends with the shop sales agents and cashier..i mean you have no choice, you can find friendship anywhere.

just go out, like parks, museums, cafe, sports club of ur interest , may youll start to find like minded people, eventually endup having lots of friends , if not atleast few good ones worth trusting and may be you could feel unburdened .
hope this helps to both of you girls , one from norway, and another  from riyadh.

Thanks to u all  ...yes i can say its nt impossible to find friends. 

i feel your pain, moved from the uk in jan 2017 to china, not made 1 friend only work colleagues, sit alone night after night, dont think i will stay here, driving me crazy. but not of back to uk. might try spain or a country that isnt so difficult to fit in

@funnyoldworld  hahaha you have no idea and in my own case the odds are not in my favour being Nigerian, even though I lived in the UK for a long while doesn't change I'm Nigerian ..and with the bloody Nigerian prince saga, my chances are always been screwed. People hear Nigeria and all they hear is " fraud alert fraud alert beep beep beep". it's exhausting

So i guess...its the same ..no matter which country in the world...we are surronded by people ..but we feel alone..thanks to the Internet ...and thanks to Netflix in my case 

I rarely speak personally unless I've been friends with those people for a long time. And living in another country using a language other than english is just so difficult. But yes, I do make myself busy to survive loneliness. I try to learn new skills. Finding new hobbies. But still, I'm always inside my house which I don't actually feel bad because I like being at home. It's just that, when I go to work, I'm silent.. Although they are nice people, I just can't find any interesting topic to start a conversation with.

I am Indian and I have friends in Malawi, Nigeria  , Botswana, point is when u find a people of similar interest , what more could u need to start talking and u'll become friends. World is big and don't loose hope my friend.

I heard u can skii in Norwegian slopes, interesting sights in there like Bergen, explore them , I.am a shy guy, u can always go around and refresh your mood, life is not meant to spend at home.

i was like that at the first time i traveled and was alone, try to go out and walk to discover the place and connect with people

The statement 'I feel like I am not me anymore' is an issue in itself. Who is 'Me'? Who you are now is still you, just you in a different situation. Me in one place and me in another may be different but its still me. Why have you defined who you are? We should not label ourselves as a type of person. We are all ever changing and evolving, the person you were before is not the same as you are now, of course. When we say 'I am shy' then our belief in that makes it manifest. I felt the same when I first moved away and lived in the Philippines. Now I don't have that problem because I have learnt that the man I am today is not the man I will be tomorrow or in 5 years, as my experiences evolve my character. Only out of our comfort zones do we learn about ourselves, the hard part is to see the uncomfortable situation as an opportunity to learn and grow. In hindsight I benefited massively from that uncomfortable and lonely time, gaining both a better understanding of myself and developing more empathy for others I now meet.

@andyhifa changing who you are to fit in isn't simple, is not something you decide during breakfast and enforce it during lunch.You have been this person for so long, that you don't know how to be someone different, it's a very scary transition and it's scarier when you have to do it alone without a support system. So yes maybe fitting in comes easy to you which I must say that's impressive if it does, but for some of us, it doesn't, however, you are right we have to get out of our comfort zones to actually grow.

Awww... I'm so afraid if the same thing, been in here looking for friends to make so this transition will be easier ... let's stay in contact, ok? I'll be in Suzhou in less than a week ... we can Wechat/ Skype etc... us women need to stick together... 💯😁

this isnt about gender, its about making friends with people who can communicate with each other, why make it a 'girls gotta stick together' thing?

I've been living abroad for a decade now and it's funny how those same issues play out over a longer time period.  Expats tend to really adapt to integrating and fit in well, or reject making that transition and tend to become a little bitter.  Or at least that's how they seem to present themselves online; in real life maybe more are somewhere in the middle.

After all this time I can't say I really have any Thai friends, just plenty of acquaintances, and I've fallen out of touch with the few people who seemed like local foreign friends.  I have two kids and I stay busy with them, so in that one sense that doesn't matter so much.  In my case it helps being married to a Thai too, since I have that connection to local culture, to doing things that Thais do, and knowing in-laws, and so on.  My kids are Thais; it's funny having a connection through people that I've experienced being born and developing into greater independence.

I'm not sure any of this relates to advice or lessons learned that are easy to pass on.  It seems like some minimal level of connections would need to come up or else it would be hard to relate to the local culture at all.  In lots of cases foreigners might feel like they have a positive, enjoyable, balanced life even though they are only connected to a limited extent.  If staying long term is the idea local language use seems to be more of a make-or-break factor than it might first seem.  In Bangkok a really significant percentage of the people use English reasonably well, maybe 10% are relatively fluent, and a quarter can express quite a bit, and more than half know some English, but still learning a functional version of Thai would make a lot of difference.

It would seem a lot more challenging outside of a larger city area, where there might be lots of different kinds of people living, and it would be normal to have access to lots of groups and events.  I'd expect it might never work well if it wasn't possible to somehow break into a social circle, to make a couple of friends to start, or to use some shared interest to meet with a group, which again might not be available.  Something as basic as joining a health club might work out, or whatever the local version of that is, maybe taking up jogging at a local park.