Acclimating to New Places: When Moving Becomes Normal

I’ve always been astounded at how quickly one can acclimate to new places. Forget about jet lag and travel fatigue. I’m talking about that familiar feeling you get once you’ve grown accustomed to a place.

The first time I left the US was in 2012. I moved to South Korea on a yearlong contract to teach English. Although I had traveled quite a bit within the US, I’d had never been to a foreign country. Not even Mexico or Canada—and I’m half Canadian for goodness sakes!

After a couple of months in Korea, it became my life. It was almost as if nothing existed before that, although obviously it had. I realized that I had experienced this before, in moving to Davis for university.

There’s a point when you establish a new normal and it becomes difficult to believe that it has ever been any different.

The same thing happened in Colombia. Washing clothes by hand in a concrete basin had always been difficult, two—sometimes three—showers a day was the story of my life, and being covered in bird shit and animal guts was a daily expectation.

Over the years this acclimation period has gotten shorter. I adjusted to Melbourne life after only a couple of weeks. It wasn’t even that I knew the city well, I simply had established a routine.

My mornings began with a trip to the gym, which was decorated with vibrant street art, or the yoga studio at the end of Sydney Road. This was followed up by a shower and a cup of my favorite hazelnut coffee blend. Then it was off to work, where I would get another cup of coffee from a shop down the adjoining laneway. At the end of the day I would take the tram home—sometimes stopping at my grocery store of choice—have dinner and either write, read, or watch TV with housemates.

Even the terrible blisters and cold nights on the Te Araroa weren’t enough to prevent acclimation. After five days my life was and always had been walking. Traveling around without my pack was strange, leaving me feeling naked and exposed. To be honest, the only thing I never really got over was the smell.

It shouldn’t surprise me that London living normalized in less than 24-hours. As I walked past the park—full of dogs off their leads, joggers, and children playing in the mud—I was filled with an eerie sense of familiarity, almost like déjà vu.

True, I’d lived in London before, back in 2015. But I was in a new suburb, in an area of the city I had never seen. Still, the path was a regular companion, the park a friendly neighbor, and the walk an essential part of my daily existence.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Only a day before I was in a completely different country anxiously awaiting my COVID-19 test results, but that felt like a lifetime ago.

I realize that act of moving, the introduction to newness has become my normal. I’m certain there will be future places that require longer adjustment periods, but the point is that in the end I will adjust.

In this life that I’ve chosen, I don’t leave the love I have for family and friends behind; it travels with me, crossing oceans and bridging boarders. It is a constant part of my normal. So that when I arrive somewhere new, I don’t feel alone or alienated; I feel home.