People who work and live away from their families normally encounter the battle of homesickness. It’s not easy to be away from your family and friends. You need to sacrifice everything. Homesickness might attack to anyone else without any notice. Being an Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) I am not exempted of that feelings. How to deal homesickness?
- Communication
Regular communication with them can minimize your homesickness. There are several ways to communicate with your family and friends. The latest technology allow us to draw more closer to our loveone’s.
- Mobile Apps
There are a lot of mobile apps that we can used to talk and send SMS for free, namely: wechat, whatsapp, tango, line, viber, didi, kakaotalk, coco, chikka, and many more.
- Social Media
Facebook, twitter and Instagram are most common way of connecting to our families and friends. Most of android and iphones are supported with different social media apps and some you need to install it within a few seconds or a couple of minutes and you can start using it. You don’t need to have a personal computer to use their service.
2. Mingle with colleagues
No other person closest you in the place where you presently living except your colleagues. Why not joining them and have fun. They know your feelings because you are walking in the same path. Although, not all of them might understand you but rest assure that most of them knows what is the feeling while away from your family. Give time to mingle with them. Plan for a picnic or an outside hang out to divert all your loneliness.
3. Love your work
I know it’s not easy to do it especially if you work on the job that is not belong to your field. Unemployment is the main problem in our society and it’s not easy to find one. Because you are already there, give time to yourself to learn and love your work. How? Mind set yourself that you do it for the sake of your family. Learn new things with the company which you think you might enjoy. You can do a cross training in different departments and learn different techniques to make your job more simple and easy.
4. Keep yourself Busy
By keeping yourself busy, you can’t think different things that will lead you to homesickness. If you are off for work, you can visit to different places nearby and enjoy the company of friends. Or you can do shopping with your colleagues. Usually I did everytime I am off from work.
Latest posts by Giordz (see all)
- Dealing with Homesickness - 06/12/2014
- A Traveller’s Guide - 05/24/2014
- I Miss Your Hugs -Mom! - 05/10/2014
- Verifying your Paypal thru SMARTMoney Card - 04/15/2014
- How To Apply a SMARTMoney Card - 04/14/2014
You forgot get busy with d2d and socialize here.
Yes my dear friend, aside from the points I listed above, I keep myself busy also on the things that can make me happy socializing with different walks of life through online communications. One of it is D2D, whom I spent some of my time everyday.
But you know sometimes, even if we have constant communications with rough skype, I can still feel homesickness. And what worse is, I don’t have so done to talk here because very few know how to speak English…
Now I plant vegetables and flowers so that’s a new way dealing with my homesickness
You can talk to them through their language. You are a teacher so it is easy for you to do it.
Yes I know, we felt that way but keeping yourself busy and applied the points above can minimize your homesickness.
Yes, but sometimes, even if a person does something if homesickness hits OMG lol
I understand but what I said, atleast we can minimize our homesickness.
relax.. relax.. I am not making an argument here… peace…. I don’t like to lose my free trip to Dubai…
Lmao…cebu pacific now offered free seats to Dubai. Maybe you can avail on the promo.
really? so where am I going to sit then? on the aisle?
Good question. There are seats reserve on the plane wings.
I just thought so… I know the feeling, and instead of having seat belt the passengers are given bible and rosary (if Catholic) LOL
Lol…you are given a complete gear so that you can sustain and enjoy the travel until you reach your destination. Hehehe
yes I know I understand that… and for toilet paper .. recycled paper will be given instead. hahaha.
It is good you are writing here at D2D, at least you have an outlet. It is hard to be away from your family. A lot of Filipinos are enduring that. How I wish they do not have to work overseas and be gainfully employed here. . .. .a wish, a wish!!
I do hope that after 5 years of staying here, I will stay home in the Philippines and run my own business instead of working away from my family.
D2D is my gateway to enjoy myself and don’t think more about them everyday.
you are lucky you have these new technology all we had were long distance calls (expensive) and the snail mail 🙂
Before it was so expensive but now, you can avail the service free of charge.
I am thinking of my brother whose working over seas. Thank God for the new technology we had now we are able to communicate with our love ones just like we are talking face to face.
It’s a great help to us who work away from our family. It’s simply amazing.
Yes and now being away from the family is hassle compared before.
Yes partner it’s hassle free.
Yes, ‘love your job’ is a very good tip. This will mitigate homesickness to a large extent.
We need to love our job even it’s hard to do so.
Very nice tip for foreign students 🙂 I’ll keep this in my note for later.
Will you be able to go home, soon? At least if there’s a deadline, that can also help. Sometimes, nothing takes the place of home, though.
That’s good for those who have just started working abroad and also those who are working within the country and seldom go home because of shortages in their budget. I have a relative who has just come home after 40 years. She is just in the Visayas and her hometown is in Mindanao. She explained that she could not afford to go home and because she was given by her sister for her fare she was able to come home. Now, she is still in her hometown and. I know how she has missed her family right now. She devoted herself in lots of housework at her sister’s house just to ease her homesickness.
I agree. That is one major reason why until now I hesitate working abroad. But you’re right. There are so many mediums we can use to communicate on a daily basis.
Luckly, I have arely had to deal with this type of problem. I love your advice on trying to keep your mind on something else. I think, that works the best.
I think that keep yourself busy is the best advice. Keeps your mind off of things and helps the day go by faster.