It’s been nearly two months since I’ve left Sydney, just over a month since I’ve arrived in Singapore. In the last two months, I’ve already done more new things than I have in the last five years — I’ve been to four different countries, seen my first international concert, hiked my first mountain, started training two martial arts, made so many friends from across the globe, settled into a new “home” 6,302 kilometres from all that I’ve known for the last 20 years.

Except that I haven’t settled.

Every exchange student I speak to has already fully integrated and acclimated to being in a new country, to living their best life in a country so different from their own, to the food, the people, the change. They’re having a fantastic time, enjoying their studies and the freedom that exchange provides — they say that it gives them time to finally relax and pursue things they initially hadn’t had the time or opportunity to. And while I have been able to do things I couldn’t before, there’s a nagging voice at the back of my mind that screams I don’t belong.

I don’t know how to think of Singapore as a home when I sometimes feel like I’m simply counting down the days until I get back to Sydney. It’s not that I don’t love it here — I do; the food, the people, the culture, the learning environment, the fact that I’m now a five minute walk away from my friends instead of a half an hour drive. So many changes simply happened all at once, and it makes it so hard to settle or to not feel like a foreigner in my own skin.

Share this Story

caught in the riptide

foggy skies in fiordland

from cerulean to azure

hikes in aoraki

the go-to getaway for Singaporeans

japan's old capital