I come from a smaller city of Srilanka, first time in my life I am exposed to a foreign country which is fortunately United States, where I am supposed to jump straight to a completely different culture. Though, I left my home country 4 weeks ago and now occupied in the busy schedule of my fellowship program in Washington DC, I couldn’t stop thinking about my home; homesickness started Kicking me. I started feeling uneasy due to cut off from my regular support system, confusion in understanding a new environment, culture shock, and advanced technologies in Transportation. At one point I broke down and in desperation called my family and shed tears. But then I realized: no one comes half way across the world for nothing; I have an intention in being here; missing my family is the price I ought to pay for this opportunity. So finally, I made a promise to myself that will never happen again.
So I started setting up myself with few routines which is helping me in battling homesickness; I schedule specific times for video calls with my family; Send gifts to my family to make them feel happy; Spend time with my colleagues who stays with me in the house and share with them how I feel; find out super markets to buy spicy products to cook food that I used to eat at home with my family; explore parts of the city; try new restaurants; find my own shortcuts to back home from work than using routine metro and get lost in between .These few techniques gradually started working and I feel have been recovering from homesickness.
