Feeling depresssed on year abdoad

You have put in a lot of work for your degree already. You have to ask yourself can you stick it out for this placement to fulfil the course requirement. I understand it is a small town - do you have option to travel to nearby towns and cities in your free time. Think about it as an experience not with dread. When you feel you miss home, you can email or Skype family or friends. You mention you are in Spain, maybe your friends could go visit you in their holiday time?

If you wanted, you could request to go home for Christmas for a week or two if you feeling homesick and then return to Spain.

If you feel this has a really harmful effect on your mental health, then maybe you have to quit to focus on yourself. However, I would try to continue if possible. Make sure you eat well and look after yourself. Go for walks or travel to the nearby areas, keep yourself busy.

You could set a trip to the nearby city as a treat - something to look forward to at the end of the week (or whenever you get time off).

How are your colleagues? Also, are they other students on their Year Abroad near you? You could meet up - easy to talk to and you are all in the same situation. At least your father will come to visit you, which it will be nice to see a friendly face. Maybe you could compile a list of sights for the both of you to see? It will get you interested and more informed about what is in the area.

Drink plenty of water - even shorter walks are better than no walks. Try to stay out of the sun at the hottest parts of the day. Spain can cater for vegan diets too, and some of the best produce is in Spain!

When you return to Christmas, don't think of how sad you are that there are five months left. Just enjoy being with your family, and that it is only a short time that you will see them again. In the long term, this experience will be good for you, it is just how you choose to take it.

Have you asked your colleagues for recommendations of things to do in the surrounding area?

Try to find some positive about each day. It is all to easy to focus on the negative and that just makes you miss home even more. If you feel more optimistic, then it will take your mind off your worries.

Have you tried going to the sports hall in person and checking to see if they would let you in? Sometimes they might make exceptions, especially if you are working in the local area.

Travel! Go to local cities at the weekend, Seville and Granada for example are steeped in history, culture and have great food. If you're into sports, then Seville has two great football teams and there are many others in the area. Don't isolate yourself in your small town.

Look at what you can get out of it. You feel anxious because you are in a totally different world to your own, and everything is alien. As part of my uni degree I spent 4 months studying in Austria. Some of the stuff I found completely foreign... but certain things stay the same - like if you are upbeat (not like a Duracell bunny, but you know, smile and ask people you work with about their day), people will be nice back to you. You have visiting places around, taking pictures, writing a journal about the positive parts of your experience - so you can keep it all for future years and look back at it with awe that you did it. I also suffer with anxiety but try to keep it under control - remember, your feelings are not the actual situation, but how you perceive it. Try and eat good things that make you feel happy, have enough sleep, when you feel anxiety is taking over - get outside for some fresh air when you can. Try and remember your hobbies. Do you read, sing or anything else that can help you relax? Remember - at this stage you do not have a family/children/obligations near you - so you can just spend all the free time on enjoying life. Good luck. ❤️

Well obviously you are feeling low. You're in another country, where you don't really know anyone and you seem like a naturally anxious person. But like anything, I think it's just matter of getting used to it. I'm from London; when I was 17, I had work experience for 3 weeks in a hospital in Hong Kong. I could only speak a few words in Cantonese, the customs and mannerisms were completely different and I knew absolutely no one. After the first day, I remember I was so ready to burst out crying and ask to quit.

In actuality, nothing really changed over the next few weeks. In a literal sense. I didn't suddenly make a buddy, or I didn't suddenly learn to chat with people. BUT I got used to it. That was the only thing that really changed. And once you get used to something, it starts not being so bad. I know it seems pretty impossible; you've hardly been in Spain what, three weeks? I don't blame you, but I think you should trust that things will get better once you settle into your experience a bit more.

Maybe it's just how I am, but I love travelling and I love the prospect of being in a small town where I can just look at the view. Yes, it'll get boring sometimes. But I'm a bit of a social recluse anyways and as long as I have my sketchbook and pencil, I'm ok. I would take this experience as a time to get yourself used to complete independence, and you will have to be completely independent one day anyways so you're a step ahead of other people.

I would just give yourself a little more time. I know you think that five months is a long time, but it really, really isn't. When you complete it, you'll probably be thinking how fast it went by, even. And you wouldn't have wasted all your effort at uni, either.

I do realise that I've been very very quick to be like "oh I want to go back home" and I am going to give it more time before I get in touch with my uni and see if they can offer me advice (even regarding my mental health, not even about me leaving early or anything). Hopefully, once I've been at the school a few weeks and I've sorted out my paperwork etc, I can get into s routine that makes my anxiety easier to cope with.

I'm a bit of recluse/introvert too and I'm doing exactly what I would do back home, usually I don't mind not really doing anything all day, but I think because I'm completely on my own with no familiarity, it's having an adverse effect on me.

Hopefully by Xmas time I feel a bit better and I can face going back out for the last five months, I'm just worried that seeing my family friends pets etc for the first time In three months will make me miss them even more when I go back out 😭

Hey! I've just finished my year abroad, having been doing British Council in northern Spain - and your experiences are fairly normal. I was living in a small town called Soria, about 35K people, with the nearest cities at least a 2 hour bus ride away. How small is your town in terms of people and schools? If other language assistants are living out of town it would really be worth considering doing the same. A friend of mine was living in a village of 3000 45 mins away because it was where her school was, but it made socialising a lot more difficult. You may have a cheap flat there but it won't be much different in terms of costs in a flatshare in a bigger city.

It does take a little while to settle in - you've only been there two weeks! Are you living alone? It would really be a good idea to try to find flatmates - I lived with three students, none of whom spoke a word of English, and with my limited Spanish at the time it made it quite hard at first. Honestly, I didn't really feel settled until I was coming back after Christmas.

The other big thing is TRAVEL. You really do need to regularly get out of town (like every month at least) - spend the weekend in Seville, stay in a hostel, it can be pretty cheap and is one of the best things about the year. It also means you'll meet more people. You should be getting your wages (though if you're ministerio good luck with regular payments lol), erasmus and student finance, I was better off on my year abroad than I'd ever been in my life because of how cheap the living costs are.

My year group also set up a blog that you might find comforting: https://arealisticyearabroad.wordpress.com/

Right, my sister was like that too. First year of uni, she had a blast but when she came back for the first time after four or five weeks, she couldn't stop crying when it was time to go back. However fun or beneficial an experience is, I think people will always prefer familiarity.

And just think that this experience will look really good when you're applying for a job or something. Good luck.

I'm not exactly surely how big the town itself is, the only data I can find online is for the municipality as a whole and there are a few smaller villages away from the town proper, but it's definitely about 20 thousand people roughly. The closest cities are seville and Huelva and I was thinking about moving to them, based on what others have told me, but the bus connections start pretty late in the day and take like an hour to get here roughly, and I start most days at 8:15/9:15. I know i could maybe car share with teachers but they've told me they recommend I live in The town itself because they've had problems in the past with other assistants not making it on time. Apparently there's also a flat shortage in seville just now so is it worth it having that uncertainty when I do have a pretty sweet deal here rn? (At most it would be 200 a most, rent and bills and wifi included).

I have two flatmates, one is a teacher in the school, he speaks English decently and the other one is learning English I think. They're nice enough but they tend to either be out at work or in their rooms too!

Thankfully the Junta is employing me, do you know if that means my wages are more likely to be on time? I'm definitely going to travel to Seville either this weekend or next weekend, when I'm feeling not as down and the weather is cooling down a bit. How did you find travelling on a Sunday? I read a student testimony in the BC's actual information pack that said to avoid travelling on a Sunday.