Expat partner Haromi de Lorenzana explains what she’s learned (other than multiple languages) from starting fresh in a new culture many times over.
A fast learner
“When I arrived in Germany as a 24-year-old in 1997, I wasn’t able to work, so I focused on raising my kids and learning German very intensively,” says Haromi, a Guatemalan mother of three (now adult children). “They say that a language is the key to a culture. But if I was quite fluent in German after two years, I would say it took me 10 years to fully understand the culture!”
Touch and go
“In the beginning, I faced many challenging emotions. It was often a battle between my head (‘you should stay in Germany!’) and my heart (‘I want to go back to Guatemala!’). But to succeed in life you have to push yourself sometimes,” says Haromi, who eventually embarked on her own career as a translator. “After 12 years in Germany, we moved to Mexico for four years and then to the UK, which is when – at the age of 40 – I began to learn English. That was a hard transition but my first expat experience in Germany taught me, as Sinatra once sang: ‘I can make it anywhere!’”
What energises you?
Following a second stint in Germany, Haromi is now in Milan and studying Italian: “Adjusting to a new culture isn’t just about learning the language. You also need to build a social life and find out who you want to be in your new home. Sometimes your weaknesses will be exposed. That’s why you need to find people and activities that energise you and give you the strength to push through the bad days.”
The importance of attitude
“A long time ago, my husband told me a story to illustrate the importance of attitude to relocation. A foreigner arrives in a new country and asks a local: ‘What are the people like here? In my country they’re close-minded, mean, negative and short-tempered.’ The local replies: ‘Oh, they’re the same here.’ But then another foreigner arrives and asks the same question, except he says his compatriots are open, generous, kind and patient. So the local replies: ‘Oh, they’re the same here’. This analogy always reminds me to be the sort of person that I wish to meet, wherever we go in the world.”
Photo: Haromi and her husband
