I moved from Ottawa, Canada, to London, England, about 12 years ago.

I was 23, naïve, and assumed that everything would work out for me.

I’m super lucky that it did; I got a job, a houseshare with some amazing people, and was able to build a life I’m really proud of. I had no money, but a ton of delusion.

Recently I was thinking about how different it was for my partner; he moved from Canada in his 40s, with a career in software. He was in a much more established place than I was, and what younger me would deem a “proper adult”.

We had vastly different experiences moving to London. And talking to him about his experiences have made me remember what it was like my first few years in London. It was thrilling and fun—but it was also lonely, and difficult. If you’re considering an international move, I want you to know—it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. It’s also one of the hardest. My biggest emotional takeaways from moving internationally are:

Moving isn’t travelling. Yes, you’re getting on a plane; and yes, everything will be new and exciting for the first while. But if you treat a move like a trip you’re going to burn out, fast. Travel is being a tourist; observing foreign customs and deciding which ones you’ll participate in; not being so worried about the money in your pocket, as you might not be in a location for a long time. Moving is work. It’s figuring out how to register for the doctor’s office and to get a bank account; it’s waiting in line for hours trying to get your work permit card; it’s trying to figure out what bus will drop you off closest to work, and if it’s worth the gridlock traffic; it’s thinking of things in pounds, not dollars, instead of converting everything automatically. I’m not saying it’s not thrilling, and it can certainly feel like an adventure—but it will also feel hard, because it is hard. And that’s OK. And it’s OK if you miss travelling after you’ve moved abroad, especially if your finances limit your travel budget in the beginning—being somewhere new permanently doesn’t mean you won’t want to explore other places!

The amount of unexpected expenses can be frustrating. When my partner moved over, there were some expenses we expected—like a year’s cost of the NHS up-front, VISA fees, and a deposit on the flat we were moving to. But other things that surprised us included excess baggage fees for moving over, fees for setting up utilities as new customers (we had to pay £500 up-front to our electric company as new customers), and our movers ended up charging us twice as much because of a parking mishap. All of these things were unavoidable—but when you’re already putting money towards building a home and international flights, budgeting becomes really important, and it’s frustrating when unexpected costs come up.

You’ll get homesick for the weirdest things. I never realized how much I loved Jolly Rancher candies until I left Canada and realized that they weren’t available here. Neither was my favourite shampoo brand, apple fritter donuts, or my favourite frozen drink in the summertime (they’re just starting to get Tim Hortons in the UK, but the reviews I’ve heard have only been so-so). You also might find you miss familiarity that you were once used to—for me, all the houses I was surrounded with in London looked nothing like the houses I’d always grown up with. I started getting little pangs, wanting to look around and see anything familiar.

FOMO is real, and not for silly things, either. It’s one thing to see an Instagram of a Friday night, and feel jealous that you weren’t invited. But there are a lot of pivotal moments you miss out on when you live away from your loved ones. Things like your best friend’s bad breakup, your nephew taking his first steps, your family coming together when someone is rushed to the hospital. Those little moments that make for deeper connections in relationships will be harder to come by when your loved ones are overseas. And speaking of connection…

Voicenotes are about to become a way of life. Even if you feel uncomfortable walking and talking, voicenoting in private will quickly become second-nature. Voicenotes are the best way to personally update friends on big and small moments, that allow for time zones to not be a barrier to the communication. Where a phone call would take coordinating time zones so you’re both available in real time, a voicenote has the effect of “listen to me whenever you’re free, and I’ll do the same”. The emotional rush I get when I see I’ve got a new one can’t be understated.

Not having support systems—or even knowing what they look like where you land—might have a strong emotional impact. Granted, when I left Ottawa, I was leaving the city where my parents and siblings and friends lived, and being without them (before the days of voicenotes and over-the-internet texting) was hard. But what was also hard were the million other little things that felt unfamiliar to me, that would have felt comforting in Canada. I’ve always loved libraries, and in Ottawa, there’s one city-wide system. But in my first year in London, I’d had to register for four different library cards in different boroughs. I got lost a lot, as I was used to a North-American grid system for roads (whereas a map of London looks like a series of spaghetti strands that meet in central places). Not having my card in hand as I tried to exit the barriers of the London tube meant death glares from other harried travellers; no one had told me to use CityMapper rather than Google Maps, which routinely gave me the wrong times for busses; I would have been run over more than once if the instructions “LOOK LEFT” or “LOOK RIGHT” weren’t written on the ground besides crosswalks. All these little things can make you feel adrift; like, I’m an adult, but suddenly I don’t know how anything works, and everyone else seems to have no issues. It can feel really isolating, and more than once I had an emotional reaction to it. This is normal, and you have to give yourself a break when this happens!

You’ll get lost (this is good). The only way to get familiar with an area is to explore it; if you’re only going from Point A to B, and you take the same path every time, you’re going to run into trouble when the path is blocked. Don’t stay stuck in your phone’s navigation; look around and see what’s worth taking note of. OK, you’re off the path you wanted; what else is here? Might this one day be your new favourite coffee place, book store, cinema? It might be scary at first, especially if you’re not sure how to get where you need to be; but if you’re able to lean into this feeling, you’ll soon realize that being lost is something easily fixable.

You might be lonely for longer than you thought you’d be. I won’t sugarcoat it—making new friends in a big city was hard. A lot of things didn’t help me when I first moved here, even though I was trying everything I could (Meetup groups, Facebook in-person socials, after-work drinks, book clubs)—saying yes to every opportunity I could to meet new people. But even in their 20s, a lot of people already had friend groups; many of the people I encountered had friends that had moved from their university towns at the exact same time, and were spending lots of time with them. But if I had to start my friendships from scratch at this point, I guarantee I’d have a harder time than I did in my early 20s when there was an influx of people like me (young adults, in starter jobs where the pay was low but I was learning and growing and energized by everything). Those circumstances can really help with bonding you to other people! Having said that…

You might get disappointed when friends start to move away. I know I was; I moved to London, spent all this time making friends…and when I finally felt like I had a strong social circle,  people started moving closer to their parents and families. After 5 or 10 years, they shared with me that they’d come to the big city to get a job and rise through the ranks in a place with lots of opportunity, and—now that their careers were a little more established—they wanted to move back to their smaller towns. Their parents were there; buying a home would be cheaper; they were getting married and thinking of kids, and they wanted to have big back yards instead of tiny balconies for the kids to run around on. All of which is fair! People need to make the right choices for themselves and their lives. But after this happened 4 or 5 times, I started asking myself; is this a chain of events most people follow? Should I be following it? Am I going to fall behind? Might life be better in Ottawa? It was a whirlwind, especially as I loved London and I wanted to stay. It’s not all bad, of course—I now get to visit my friends all around the country!

You might have mixed feelings about where “home” is. There are some times where I miss Canada, but after 12 years here, I feel as though London is home. But for many years, I felt conflicted; especially when I missed my family or friends, when Canada did exceptionally well in the Olympics, or even when a well-meaning stranger would ask where my accent was from, I missed my “home” in Canada. Defining home is a personal journey that every person needs to go through on their own!

Would you consider an international move? Let me know in the comments; and as always, happy travels!