I’ve been living in Madrid, Spain, for about a month now! To be honest, it took me a couple days/weeks to find friends that I felt like I really clicked with. In a lot of ways, it feels like freshman year of college again. I moved away from home to a foreign town, have a new class schedule and commute to get used to, living in a dorm with other students all in the same boat who are also looking for friends. I’ve had countless conversations about “where are you from?”, “what are you studying?”, “what dorm do you live in?”. I’ve found that the best way to meet people is to be outgoing and reach out!

For a long time, I thought that other people would show interest in me if they wanted to be friends, but I’ve learned that it’s a two way street and people want to become friends with others who actively put in effort to reach out and contribute to the friendship. It helped when I realized that everyone else is more similar to me than I thought, waiting for someone to reach out and pull them into fun plans. In reality, it helps to be the person who seeks out fun things to do and invites other people. Overthinking was mostly what stopped me, I thought that if I invited someone, they would just come along to be nice, not because they really wanted to. But I don’t do that, so it’s not reasonable to think that other people would either.

The best mindset to have is that if someone doesn’t want to be involved in plans, they will find ways to say no, and it’s not your issue to worry about! Giving other people the benefit of the doubt takes away so much of the stress of finding friends. I’m certainly not perfect at this, but it’s a work in progress and I am getting better! I hope my experience can help someone else in their journey making friends abroad!

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: IES Abroad: Engineering, Math, and Science in Madrid