Living in a foreign country Today's topic of my essay is "living in a foreign country". While some say that living overseas gives you opportunities to communicate with people from other cultures and can broaden your horizons, I personally have mixed feelings about this experience. As those who support this idea claim, one of the advantages of living abroad is that, in a way, you are forced to meet new people and experience different lifestyles, which helps you learn about other cultures. I myself have learnt some individualist attitudes while I was in New Zealand, which I was not used to due to my original cultural background, a collectivist mindset. This definitely allowed me to take advantage of the situation by assimilating benefits from both sides. On the other hand, I have struggled and I still am struggling with language and cultural barriers, which are inevitable when relocating in another country. As I currently live in a small town in southern Spain, I often get frustrated and feel homesick for New Zealand, being isolated from the local communities as they always treat me as an outsider due to the language barrier. Lifestyle difference is another issue that has been putting me off. Here in Spain, people eat much later compared to universal eating time and stay up so late to socialise with others, to which I still struggle adjusting myself. On balance, although there are some significant gains in life abroad, experiencing new environment and learning another language, there are difficulties people often need to overcome to be able to gain comfortable life in a foreign country due to some cultural barriers or differences in customs and behaviours.

Writing a diary Hello, I am originally from Japan but currently live in southern Spain. I decided to join italki because I want to improve my English skills. I have been studying English for a while but I still struggle to write a good essay. Actually I just joined italki about a month ago and havent been really active but I met a really nice Aussie lady there and we decided to exchange our notebooks every week. Well... today I am going to write about my last weekend trip to Granada. As I live in a small town middle of nowhere in Spain, it is very difficult for me to travel around the country, but last weekend I got a chance to take my dog to Granada, which Ive been wanting to do for a while. I took her to the park just outside of the city near the science museum. She was so excited and ran around on the grass for over an hour! It was so nice to see her enjoying. I hope we can have another trip there soon.